The Reformation
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The Queen’s Council and the English people recognized the force of these considerations, but they feared that the marriage would make England an appendage of Spain, and would involve England in recurrent wars against France. Charles countered by offering, in his son’s name, a marriage contract by which Philip should bear the title King of England only so long as Mary lived; she was to retain sole and full royal authority over English affairs; she was to share all of Philip’s titles; and if Don Carlos (Philip’s son by an earlier marriage) died without issue, Mary or her son was to inherit the Spanish Empire; moreover, added the astute Emperor, Mary was to receive £60,000 a year for life from the Imperial revenues. All this seemed generous enough, and with a few minor provisions the English Council sanctioned the marriage. Mary herself, despite her modest timidity, looked forward to it eagerly. How long she had waited for a lover!
But the people of England resented her choice. The Protestant minority, which was bearing up under suppression in the hope that Elizabeth would soon succeed a fragile and barren Mary, feared for its life if the power of Spain should stand beside Mary in enforcing the Catholic restoration. Nobles rich in ecclesiastical property shivered at the thought of disgorging. Even Catholic Englishmen objected to putting upon the throne a dour foreigner who would doubtless use England for his own alien purposes. Protests were voiced everywhere in the land. The city of Plymouth, in panic, asked the King of France to take it under his protection. Four nobles laid plans for an uprising to begin on March 18, 1554. The Duke of Suffolk (pardoned father of Jane Grey) was to raise Warwickshire, Sir James Croft was to lead his Welsh tenants, Sir Peter Carew would rouse Devonshire, and Sir Thomas Wyatt the Younger would lead the revolt in Kent. The elder Wyatt—the poet—had secured a mass of Church lands, which his son was loath to surrender. The conspirators made the mistake of confiding their plans to Courtenay, whose task was to secure Elizabeth’s co-operation. Bishop Gardiner, who had kept watch on Courtenay as a rejected and perhaps vengeful suitor for Mary’s hand, had him arrested, and Courtenay, presumably under torture, betrayed the plot.
The conspirators, preferring to die in battle rather than on the block, rose hurriedly to arms, and revolt flared up in four counties at once (February 1554). Wyatt led an army of 7,000 men toward London, and sent out an appeal to all citizens to prevent England from becoming an appanage of Spain. The Protestant part of the London populace set in motion a plan to open the gates to Wyatt. The Queen’s Council hesitated to commit itself, and raised not one soldier in her defense. Mary herself could not understand why the country that had so welcomed her accession should refuse her the happiness and fulfillment that she had dreamed of through so many years of misery. If now she had not taken matters into her own hands with unwonted resolution, her reign and her life would have soon ended. But she went in person to the Guildhall, and faced an excited assemblage that was debating which side to take. She told it that she was quite ready to abandon the Spanish marriage if the Commons so wished, and indeed “to abstain from marriage while I live”; but meanwhile she would not let that issue be made “a Spanish cloak” for a political revolution. “I cannot tell,” she said, “how naturally the mother loveth her child, for I was never the mother of any; but certainly if a queen may as naturally and earnestly love her subjects as the mother doth her child, then assure yourselves that I, being your lady and mistress, do as earnestly and tenderly love and favor you.”39 Her words and spirit were warmly applauded, and the assembly pledged her its support. Agents of the government were able, almost in a day, to muster 25,000 armed men. Suffolk was arrested, Croft and Carew fled into hiding. Wyatt. so abandoned, led his small force to battle in the streets of London, and made his way almost to the Queen’s palace at Whitehall. Mary’s guards begged her to flee; she would not. Finally Wyatt’s men were overcome; he yielded in exhaustion of body and soul, and was taken to the Tower. Mary breathed safely again, but she was never more the gentle Queen.
IV. “BLOODY MARY”: 1554–58
Her advisers had often condemned her policy of pardon. The Emperor and his ambassador had censured her for allowing life, even liberty, to persons who had conspired against her and would be free to do so again. How, she was asked, could Philip trust himself in a land where his enemies were left unhindered to plot his assassination? Bishop Gardiner argued that mercy to the nation required that traitors should be put to death. The Queen, in a panic of fright, veered to the views of her counselors. She ordered the execution of Lady Jane Grey, who had never wanted to be queen, and of Jane’s husband, who had so wanted to be king. Jane, still but seventeen, went to her death stoically, without protest or tears (February 12, 1554). Suffolk, her father, was beheaded, and a hundred lesser rebels were hanged. Some conspirators were spared for a while in the hope of eliciting useful confessions. Wyatt at first incriminated Elizabeth as privy to the plan, but on the scaffold (April 11, 1554) he exonerated her of all cognizance. Courtenay, after a year’s imprisonment, was let off with banishment. Charles advised Mary to put Courtenay and Elizabeth to death as perpetual threats to her life. Mary sent for Elizabeth, kept her in the palace of St. James for a month, then for two months imprisoned her in the Tower. Renard urged her immediate execution, but Mary objected that Elizabeth’s complicity had not been proved.40 During these fateful months Elizabeth’s life hung in the balance, and this terror helped to form her character to suspicion and insecurity, and was echoed in the severity of her later reign, when she had the same worry about Mary Stuart that Mary Tudor now had about Elizabeth. On May 18 the future queen was moved to Woodstock, where she lived in loose confinement but under watch. Fear that another plot might raise Elizabeth to the throne urged Mary on to marriage in the hope of motherhood.
Philip was not so eager. Through a proxy in England he married Mary on March 6, 1554, but he did not reach England till July 20. The English were pleasantly surprised to find him physically and socially tolerable: a rather strange triangular face sloping from broad forehead to narrow chin, adorned with yellow hair and beard; but also a gracious manner, a ready wit, gifts for all, and no hint that he and his retinue considered the English to be barbarians. Even for Elizabeth he had a kind word, perhaps foreseeing that Mary might prove childless, that Elizabeth would someday be queen, and that this would be a lesser evil than the accession of Mary Queen of Scotslong since bound to France—to the throne of England. Mary, though so much older than Philip, looked up to him with girlish admiration. Starved for affection through so many years, she rejoiced now to have won so charming and mighty a prince, and she gave herself to him with such unquestioning devotion that her court wondered whether England was not already subject to Spain. To Charles V she wrote humbly that she was now “happier than I can say, as I daily discover in the King my husband so many virtues and perfections that I constantly pray God to grant me grace to please him.”41
Her desire to give Philip a son and England an heir was so absorbing that she soon conceived herself pregnant. Her amenorrhea was now welcomed as a royal sign, and hope silenced the thought that that condition had often come to her before. Digestive disturbances were accepted as additional proofs of motherhood, and the Venetian ambassador reported that the Queen’s “paps” had swollen and given milk. For a long time Mary rejoiced in the thought that she too, like the poorest woman in her realm, could bear a child; and we cannot imagine her desolation when her doctors finally convinced her that her swelling was dropsy. Meanwhile the rumor of her pregnancy had swept through England; prayers and processions were arranged for her happy delivery; soon gossip said that she had borne a boy. Shops closed for a holiday, men and women feasted in the streets, church bells rang, and a clergyman announced that the child was “fair and beautiful” as became a prince.42 Broken with frustration and shame, Mary hid herself for months from the public view.
She was in a measure consoled by the return of Cardinal Pole to England. Charles had detained him at Brussels because Pole had opposed the Spanish marriage; but now that this
had been consummated the Imperial objections subsided; the Cardinal, as papal legate, crossed the Channel (November 20, 1554) to the land he had left twenty-two years before; and the warm welcome given him by officials, clergy, and people attested the general satisfaction over renewal of relations with the panacy. He greeted Mary with almost the choicest phrase in his vocabulary: Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus, and he trusted that he might soon add, “Blessed is the fruit of thy womb.” 43 When Parliament learned that Pole brought papal consent to the retention of confiscated Church property by the present holders, all went merry as a wedding should. Parliament, on its knees, expressed repentance for its offenses against the Church, and Bishop Gardiner, having confessed his own vacillation, gave the penitents absolution. The ecclesiastical supremacy of the pope was acknowledged, his right to annates and “first fruits” was reaffirmed, episcopal courts were re-established, and parish tithes were restored to the clergy. The old statutes against Lollardry were renewed, and censorship of publications was returned from state to Church authorities. After the turmoil of twenty years everything seemed as before.
Philip stayed with Mary thirteen months, hoping with her for a child; when no sure sign of it appeared he begged her to let him go to Brussels, where the planned abdication of his father required his presence. She consented sadly, went with him to the barge that was to take him down the Thames, and watched from a window till the barge disappeared (August 28, 1555). Philip felt that he had done his duty through an arduous year of making love to a sick woman, and he rewarded himself with the full-blooded ladies of Brussels.
Pole was now the most influential man in England. He busied himself with the reorganization and reform of the English Church. With Mary’s help he restored some monasteries and a nunnery. Mary was happy to see the old religious customs live again, to see crucifixes and holy pictures again in the churches, to join in pious processions of priests, children, or guilds, to sit or kneel through long Masses for the quick and the dead. On Maundy Thursday, 1556, she washed and kissed the feet of forty-one old women, shuffling from one to the next on her knees, and gave alms to all.44 Now that hope of motherhood had gone, religion was her sustaining solace.
But she could not quite resurrect the past. The new ideas had aroused an exciting ferment in city minds; there were still a dozen sects clandestinely publishing their literature and their creeds. Mary was pained to hear of groups that denied the divinity of Christ, the existence of the Holy Ghost, the transmission of original sin. To her simple faith these heresies seemed mortal crimes, far worse than treason. Could the heretics know better than her beloved Cardinal how to deal with the human soul? Word came to her that one preacher had prayed aloud, before his congregation, that God would either convert her or soon remove her from the earth.45 One day a dead dog with a monastically tonsured head, and a rope around its neck, was thrown through a window into the Queen’s chamber.46 In Kent a priest had his nose cut off.47 It seemed unreasonable to Mary that the Protestant émigrés, to whom she had allowed safe departure from England, should be sending back pamphlets attacking her as a reactionary fool, and speaking of the “lousy Latin service” of an “idolatrous Mass.” 48 Some pamphlets urged their readers to rise in revolt and depose the Queen.49 A meeting of 17,000 persons at Aldgate (March 14, 1554) heard a call to put Elizabeth on the throne.50 Insurrections in England were planned by English Protestants abroad.
Mary was by nature and habit merciful—till 1555. What transformed her into the most hated of English queens? Partly the provocation of attacks that showed no respect for her person, her faith, or her feelings; partly the fear that heresy was a cover for political revolt; partly the sufferings and disappointments that had embittered her spirit and darkened her judgment; partly the firm belief of her most trusted advisers—Philip, Gardiner, Pole—that religious unity was indispensable to national solidarity and survival. Philip was soon to illustrate his principles in the Netherlands. Bishop Gardiner had already (in the spring of 1554) vowed to burn the three Protestant bishops-Hooper, Ridley, Latimer—unless they recanted.51 Cardinal Pole, like Mary, was of a kindly disposition, but inflexible in dogma; he loved the Church so much that he shuddered at any questioning of her doctrines or authority. He did not take any direct or personal lead in the Marian persecution; he counseled moderation, and once freed twenty persons whom Bishop Bonner had sentenced to the stake.52 Nevertheless he instructed the clergy that if all peaceful methods of suasion failed, major heretics should be “removed from life and cut off as rotten members from the body.”53 Mary’s own view was expressed hesitantly. “Touching the punishment of heretics, we think it ought to be done without rashness, not leaving meanwhile to do justice to such as by learning would seek to deceive the simple.”54 Her responsibility was at first merely permissive, but it was real. When (1558) the war with France proved disastrous to her and England, she ascribed the failure to God’s anger at her lenience with heresy, and thereafter she positively promoted the persecution.
Gardiner opened the reign of terror by summoning to his episcopal court (January 22, 1555) six clergymen who had refused to accept the re-established creed.* One recanted; four, including John Hooper, deposed Bishop of Gloucester and Worcester, were burned (February 4–8, 1555), Gardiner seems to have had a revulsion of feeling after these executions; he took no further part in the persecution; his health broke down, and he died in November of this year. Bishop Bonner took charge of the slaughter. Philip, still in England, advised moderation; when Bonner condemned six more to the stake the Imperial ambassador, Renard, objected to “this barbarous precipitancy”; 57 and Philip’s confessor, a Spanish friar, preaching before the court, denounced the convictions as contrary to the mild and forgiving spirit inculcated by Christ.58 Bonner suspended the sentences for five weeks, then ordered them carried out. He thought himself lenient, and indeed was once reprimanded by the Queen’s Council for insufficient zeal in prosecuting heresy.59 To each heretic he offered full pardon for recantation, and often added a promise of financial aid or some comfortable employment;60 but when such inducements failed he passed sentence grimly. Usually a bag of gunpowder was placed between the legs of the condemned, so that the flames would cause a speedy death; but in Hooper’s case the wood burned too slowly, the powder failed to explode, and the former bishop suffered agonies for almost an hour.
Most of the martyrs were simple workingmen who had learned to read the Bible, and had been encouraged in the Protestant interpretation of it during the previous reign. Perhaps the persecutors thought it justice that the ecclesiastics who had done most to inculcate the Protestant faith should be called upon to testify to it by martyrdom. In September 1555, Cranmer, sixty-six, Ridley, sixty-five, and Latimer, eighty, were brought from the Tower to stand trial at Oxford. Latimer had tarnished his eloquent career by approving the burning of Anabaptists and obstinate Franciscans under Henry VIII. Ridley -had actively supported Jane Grey’s usurpation, had called Mary a bastard, and had assisted in deposing Bonner and Gardiner from their sees. Cranmer had been the intellectual head of the English Reformation: had dissolved the marriage of Henry and Catherine, had married Henry to Anne Boleyn, had replaced the Mass with the Book of Common Prayer, had prosecuted Frith, Lambert, and other Catholics, had signed Edward’s devise of the crown to Jane Grey, and had denounced the Mass as a blasphemy. All these men had now been in the Tower for two years, daily expecting death.
Cranmer was tried at Oxford on September 7. His examiners made every effort to elicit a recantation. He stood his ground firmly, and was judged guilty; but as he was an archbishop his sentence was reserved to the Pope, and he was returned to the Tower. On September 30 Ridley was tried, and stood his ground. On the same day Latimer was led before the ecclesiastical court: a man now quite careless of life, dressed in an old threadbare gown, his white head covered with a cap upon a nightcap over a handkerchief, his spectacles hanging from his neck, a New Testament attached to his belt. He too denied transubsta
ntiation. On October 1 they were condemned; on October 6 they were burned. Before the pyre they knelt and prayed together. They were bound with chains to an iron post, a bag of powder was hung around each man’s neck, the faggots were lit. “Be of good cheer, Master Ridley,” said Latimer, “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.” 61
On December 4 Pope Paul IV confirmed the sentence against Cranmer. For a time the first Protestant archbishop of Canterbury gave way to forgivable fear; no man who could write such sensitive English as the Book of Common Prayer could face these ordeals without exceptional suffering of body and mind. Moved perhaps by Pole’s fervent appeal, Cranmer repeatedly “renounced and abhorred and detested all manner of heresies and errors of Luther and Zwingli,” and professed belief in the seven sacraments, in transubstantiation, purgatory, and all other teachings of the Roman church. By every precedent such recantations should have commuted his sentence to imprisonment, but (according to Foxe) Mary rejected the retractions as insincere, and ordered Cranmer’s execution.62