by David Loades
As Henry’s reign drew to an end, what we know of Mary’s daily routine suggests peace and good order. She was normally resident at court, so visits are no longer recorded, but she was not at this stage regarded as a factional leader or identified with any particular cause. At the same time she had no independence, no estates to manage, no body of dependents who owed her allegiance. All her costs were paid by her father, and although her place in the succession was guaranteed by statute, nobody expected her ever to succeed. Although it was clear by 1545 at least that Henry would have no more sons, his son Edward was a flourishing, healthy youth. He had already been contracted once to marry the infant Queen of Scots, and although the Scottish Parliament had repudiated the Treaty of Greenwich that had brought this about, the Scottish marriage was still a live issue and high on the king’s agenda. Although mortality was uncertain, nobody in 1547 expected Mary to be queen.
5
THE KING’S SISTER
Neither Catherine Parr nor Mary were with Henry when he died on 28 January 1547. Even Archbishop Cranmer only just arrived in time. Henry’s death had been anticipated for several days, but his personality continued to dominate those about him until speech failed him altogether a few hours before the end. So it must have been by his own wish that neither his wife nor his daughter were present – a measure, perhaps, of his reluctance to face the true situation.[102] Both claimed to be very distressed when the news reached them, but they were bound to say that, and their real feelings are hard to discover. Each was freed from constraints that they were bound to have found irksome. Catherine, in spite of three virtually platonic marriages, was still young enough to bear children and was now free (after a decent interval) to marry again. Mary, whose marriage prospects were not as improved as she might have liked, was nevertheless by the terms of Henry’s will put in possession of a patrimony worth nearly £4,000 a year. For the first time she was independent: free to manage her own estates, to hire and dismiss her own servants, and to build a body of political clients if she felt inclined to do so.[103] Her marriage was now controlled by her brother’s council, but in other respects she was free to manage her own life in a way that she had never been able to do before, even during her years of favour. At the age of thirty-one this was an exhilarating – and possibly daunting – prospect.
The late king’s obsequies were a long and dignified process. His body was laid out by his household servants, and lay in state in the chapel at Westminster, where he had died, until 14 February. On the 15th he was transported with great solemnity to Windsor, and there on the 16th he was laid to rest in the Garter Chapel with a magnificent requiem mass. The chief mourner, by custom, was not his heir (who was not present), but the next nearest thing to a male kinsman that Henry possessed, his nephew-in-law Henry Grey, Marquis of Dorset, the husband of his niece Frances (née Brandon). Catherine watched the interment and mass from an enclosed part of the chapel gallery, known as the Queen’s Closet, but whether Mary was with her no one noticed or recorded. It is reasonable to suppose that she was not present. The whole elaborate ceremony was curiously detached from the hectic political activity that was going on at the same time. It was organised and, in a sense, presided over by William Paulet, Lord St John, in his capacity as lord great master of the household. Although St John was also lord president of the council, he seems to have used the organisation of Henry’s funeral as a means of distancing himself from the power brokering that was going on there.
Henry’s death had not been announced at once. It was only on 31 January that a formal proclamation was made, and Parliament dissolved.[104] This had enabled Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, the young king’s maternal uncle, to secure his person. There was nothing particularly sinister about this, because it has to be remembered that, in the eyes of Catholic Europe Edward was illegitimate, and Mary was the true heir. Consequently it was important to frustrate any move that she might make – or, more likely, any move that might be made on her behalf. Both the Emperor and his sister, Mary of Hungary, withheld recognition from Edward until it was clear that the English had accepted him without dissent. In the event nothing happened. Neither Mary herself nor anyone else gave the slightest hint of challenging Edward’s claim, which rested not only on statute, but also (as the statute had specified) upon the king’s last will and testament.[105]
Although the authenticity of the will that Sir William Paget, the late king’s principal secretary, read out on 2 February was challenged subsequently (and its authenticity is still a matter of debate) it was not disputed at the time.[106] Mary’s only known reaction was to complain that Hertford had kept her waiting several days before informing her of her father’s death, although she must have understood the reason for the delay. The council immediately set about converting Henry’s rather vague, and almost certainly incomplete, arrangements for the minority government into a workable form. The king had named a body of executors and assistant executors, which corresponded roughly with his final council. These executors (but not the assistants) were then given the power to make whatever provision they thought fit for Edward’s welfare and that of the realm. They decided that executive authority required the appointment of a single person as ‘Lord Protector and Governor of the King’s Person’, and selected the Earl of Hertford. It was agreed that the lord protector would not act without the assent of his colleagues, and there was little dissent at this stage. The executors then kissed hands with the new king, and he formally assented to them converting themselves into his privy council.[107] This they were bound to do, as they needed the power to govern, and their legal status as executors of a dead king was inadequate. At the same time Paget, who had worked closely with Hertford and Lisle in the last months of Henry’s life, came forward with what he claimed were the late king’s intentions for new peerage creations – intentions that had been left unfulfilled by his death.
Paget, whose testimony was supported by Sir Anthony Denny and Sir William Herbert, both gentlemen of the privy chamber who had been close to Henry, declared that in early December the king had confided to him that ‘the nobility of this realm was greatly decayed, some by attainders, some by their own misgovernance and riotous wasting, some by sickness and sundry other means’.[108] There had then followed a discussion of possible promotions, a few soundings had been taken, and estimates drawn up for the additional lands that would be necessary to support the new dignities. Henry had returned to the subject just a few days before his death, and urged Paget to see the plan implemented if he should not live to do so. Although it is natural to represent this as the new elite simply helping themselves, the old king had made no secret of his intentions, and other members of the privy chamber supported parts of Paget’s statements, according to their knowledge. The upshot was that on 17 February, the day after Henry’s interment, there was a flurry of new peerage creations. The Earl of Hertford, the protector, became Duke of Somerset; William Parr, Earl of Essex, became Marquis of Northampton; John Dudley, Viscount Lisle, became Earl of Warwick; and Lord Thomas Wriothesley became Earl of Southampton. Four new barons were also created, including Sir Thomas Seymour, the protector’s brother.[109] A few days later, on 20 February, Edward was solemnly crowned at Westminster, a ceremony attended by both his sisters and his stepmother. Within a few days of Henry’s death, the bulk of the new king’s princely household had been merged into the royal household proper, and Elizabeth (now thirteen) joined her sister in the entourage of Catherine Parr, the queen dowager.
This was never intended to be more than a temporary arrangement, because Elizabeth, like Mary, had been generously provided for in her father’s will and, once the proper arrangements could be made, would have her own estates to manage. For the time being, Elizabeth seems to have been quite content to stay where she was, but by April Mary was pressing for her own share of the endowment to be put in place. The reason for this was not any change in her relationship with Catherine, but rather the reappearance of Thomas Seymour, now Lord Seymour of Sud
eley, the queen dowager’s old suitor and the new lord protector’s brother. Although a privy councillor, and since 17 February lord admiral, Seymour was a faintly disreputable character. Whether he was really in love with Catherine, or merely fancied the idea of laying hands on her generous settlement, is not clear; however, she was in a vulnerable state of mind, and found his attentions irresistible. They were married secretly at some time during May.
When he found out, Protector Somerset was furious. Not only did he consider his brother to have acted with indecent haste, but he also suspected there was an intention to undermine his own position. A quarrel quickly developed when Somerset demanded the return of a quantity of jewellery that he claimed had been loaned to Catherine, but which she protested, with her husband’s support, had been a gift.[110] There was little else that the lord protector could do. The marriage was a fait accompli, and as he was soon to discover to his chagrin, Thomas had managed to wheedle the boy king into supporting his move, unknown to the council, which Thomas knew would back his brother in opposing the match.
By the end of April, Mary’s patrimony had been allocated. The formal grant was not made until 17 May 1548, but the first warrant for a payment to her from these lands is dated 12 April 1547. It looks very much as though an interim arrangement was quickly put in place to satisfy her desire to get away from Thomas Seymour, because some of the properties were not identified until June, and it was July before she took up residence in one of them.
Although he was disappointed by Mary’s failure to challenge Edward’s legitimacy, the Emperor clearly instructed his ambassador, Francois Van der Delft, to keep an eye on her, because Van der Delft was soon reporting in the same querulous tone as his predecessor about the dishonourable way in which she was being treated. She had, he reported, never been shown her father’s will, and had no idea what marriage portion would be allocated to her. In fact it was £10,000, but in the circumstances the point was academic.[111] She was being kept, he declared mendaciously, in miserable poverty and no respect was being shown her.
In fact Mary’s estate, when it was finally assembled, was valued at £3,819 a year, which made her the third or fourth-richest person in England. Most of it consisted of former Howard properties in Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex, including the great house at Kenninghall, which had come to the crown on the attainder of the 3rd Duke of Norfolk just weeks earlier. Whether or not Mary was consulted about this allocation in advance is not clear, but it also included some royal houses where she had lived in earlier days, notably Hunsdon (which was one of her favourites) and Newhall in Essex, upon which Henry had spent a great deal of money in the early part of his reign. It may have been for simplicity’s sake that the council decided to give her an estate much of which already belonged together and cohered, but this also had the effect of transferring many of the leaderless (and conservative, pro-Catholic) Howard supporters in East Anglia to the princess. Not only did Mary acquire a patrimony in the summer of 1547, she also acquired a clientage.[112]
This was probably not intended, because although no issue had so far arisen, it must have been known to the council that Mary’s religious views were likely to be hostile to the direction in which they were proposing to go. A small hint of this had been given when Archbishop Cranmer had arranged for all his bishops to have their appointments renewed on the death of the old king. Stephen Gardiner had at once protested that this was inappropriate because bishops were ordinaries – that is their authority derived from their consecration and not from their appointment. It was a technical point, but highly significant in view of what was to come. Mary said nothing, but her views were well enough known to her brother. When Thomas Seymour had been angling for Edward’s support in his pursuit of the king’s stepmother, which must have been within a few weeks of his accession, the boy had jokingly suggested that Seymour should try his sister Mary instead ‘to turn her opinions’.[113]
What Edward knew was certainly known to his council, and yet they took the risk of establishing Mary in what could easily turn out to be a conservative power base very close to London and the Home Counties. Van der Delft might refer to Kenninghall as though it was in Northumberland, but in fact it was within easy reach of the court, appropriate to the honour of the holder, but also – of course – making it easier to keep an eye on her. Perhaps it was felt that if she was going to have it out with the government, it was better to have her where they could see her, and also in control of an ‘affinity’, a support group, whose potential was (more or less) known. Although in a sense Mary inherited a ready-made situation in East Anglia, she did not in fact create her new establishment overnight. She now needed a council, stewards, estate managers and receivers (money collectors) as well as the chamber servants and domestic staff with which she was already familiar. What she seems to have done was to build around her existing household, recruiting particularly from those East Anglian gentry families who were now her neighbours – Robert Rochester, Edward Waldegrave and Francis Jerningham being the most prominent. Special warrants authorised payments to her for these purposes from 12 April to 15 August 1547.[114] After that they cease, and it must be supposed that by then she was collecting the revenues from her own lands. Her new establishment seems to have been completed by mid-September.
In spite of what Van der Delft might claim, Mary’s interests were in fact being well looked after at this time, but the politics of the minority government were moving in a direction that was bound eventually to lead to conflict. The Duke of Somerset was not satisfied with the terms of his protectorate. Particularly he wanted to be rid of the restrictive clause that required him always to act with the consent of the council, and at the same time to clarify the procedure by which new councillors were to be appointed. In March 1547 he obtained a new grant of his office by letters patent that addressed these issues.[115] He was now required merely to consult the council, and was given the initiative in matters of recruitment. These changes were strenuously resisted by the lord chancellor, the Earl of Southampton, so he had to be removed from office in order that the new patent could be sealed, i.e. authenticated. This was achieved by exploiting a foolish error that he made in delegating his work in chancery to civil lawyers by an unauthorised commission. He claimed that he had the right to act so ex officio, without authorisation, but the judgement was against him. He was deprived of his office, fined heavily and sentenced to imprisonment. Both the fine and the imprisonment were remitted, but he lost his office and his membership of the council.[116] He was a difficult and crossgrained colleague, but more to the point he was a well-known and tenacious religious conservative who would almost certainly have been a tough opponent of the programme of change that the lord protector now had in mind. Some conservatives remained on the council – Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of Durham, and Sir Anthony Browne, master of the horse – but they had at this stage neither the will nor the ability to be difficult.
By the summer of 1547 religious doctrine was becoming an issue in a way that it had not been while the old king was alive. Cranmer issued a set of homilies. Many of these were innocuous enough, and the archbishop did not write them all, but he did write the one on justification, which Stephen Gardiner, the conservative Bishop of Winchester, immediately pointed out was heretical. It taught justification by faith alone, a Protestant doctrine that had been outlawed by the Act of Six Articles of 1539. The protector was also allowing heretical works to be published in London, and the mass was coming under increasingly abusive attack.
At some point late in the summer or early in the autumn, Mary appears to have written formally to the protector to protest against this direction of events. The letter does not survive, but it can be reconstructed from Somerset’s response.[117] Her father, she claimed, had left the realm in ‘Godly order and Quietness’, which the council was now disrupting with innovations. At best they were negligent, and at worst pernicious, allowing ‘the more part of the realm through a naughty liberty and presumption … [to be] brought into
a division’. Henry, the protector replied, had not left a peaceful and stable situation, but a half-completed Reformation. The only way to safeguard his great achievement of the royal supremacy was to abolish ‘popish doctrine’ as well as papal authority:
It may please your Grace to call to your remembrance, what great labours, travails and pains his grace had before he could reform some of those stiff necked Romanists or papists, yea, and did they not cause his subjects to rise and rebel against him?[118]
Mary, it appears, agreed with Stephen Gardiner, who had earlier written in a similar vein, pointing out that the changes that were now appearing were contrary to the Act of Six Articles, and moreover that the council had no right to make any changes whatsoever. Only the king himself could do that, when he reached his majority in 1555. This last point was undoubtedly consistent with Henry’s own view of the supremacy, but it was a limitation that the council could in no way afford to admit. To put the ecclesiastical supremacy on hold until 1555 would not only have been impracticable, it would also have cast serious doubts on the remainder of the protector’s authority.