by David Loades
So similar were Gardiner’s and Mary’s arguments that the council suspected collusion between them, but that is unlikely. In spite of the way in which Van der Delft chose to present the situation, neither of them was arguing for a Catholic Church, but rather for the sanctity of Henry’s settlement regarding the status of the Church in England, which had always owed more to the king’s personal idiosyncrasies than it had to logic, either theological or political. Somerset was undoubtedly right when he argued that the settlement which his government had inherited was unstable, although wrong to claim that the great majority of the people supported his changes.[119] Gardiner’s position was undermined, both by his own admission that ‘a king’s authority never lacked, though he be in his cradle’ and more specifically by the repeal of the Act of Six Articles in the first Parliament of the reign, late in 1547. Neither of these factors touched Mary. She never used the Act as an argument, but rather claimed (it would appear) that her father’s position represented true religion, which no human authority had any right to touch. She later claimed that when he achieved his majority, Edward would find her ‘his true subject in this as in all else’, but since she consistently deceived herself about the reality of his position, and the circumstance never arose, too much weight should not be attached to that.
By the autumn of 1547 Mary was returning to the persecuted frame of mind that she had abandoned in 1536. At issue was the whole range of traditional rites and ceremonies that had been permitted by Henry but were repugnant to the Protestants who were now in power. Most specifically, the issue was the mass, and about that she would never retreat or compromise. As early as June 1547 Van der Delft reported that Mary was hearing as many as four masses a day.[120] He chose to represent this as a staunch defence of the old faith, but in truth it was a battle on a very narrow front. Four masses a day was excessive devotion, even by the most zealous standards, and suggests on the one hand that she did not have enough to occupy her time, and on the other that she was spoiling for a fight on her own chosen ground. There is no suggestion that her liturgical life was exceptionally rich in other ways, but it can be assumed that all the traditional rites were observed in her chapel, and that chapel was hospitably open to any who wished to participate.
Mary does not seem to have visited the court at all during 1548. Although her personal relations with Somerset remained amicable, she would no doubt have found the whole climate distasteful, and the council had many other things to think about. The English position in Scotland, apparently invincible after the victory at Pinkie in September 1547, was beginning to crumble as the garrisons that had been established in the wake of that victory were harassed and came under pressure. No progress had been made towards reinstating the Treaty of Greenwich.[121] After the death of Francis I in April 1547, the French started to make increasingly threatening noises about English-controlled Boulogne, and the Emperor was hostile and would not extend the existing defensive treaty to cover ‘the new conquest’. Cranmer and Somerset were also pressing for the development of a vernacular liturgy, and an experimental English order of communion was authorised. Mary, of course, would have nothing to do with it, but it was as yet merely authorised, not mandatory.
During the summer of 1548 Elizabeth had left the Seymour household in disgrace, and taken refuge with Sir Anthony Denny. The fourteen-year-old princess had been found by Catherine in a compromising embrace with her husband. The main responsibility for this undoubtedly lay with Thomas, but it was convenient to blame Elizabeth – and she may not have been entirely innocent.[122] The Dennys provided only a temporary refuge, and the main immediate result was that the creation of Elizabeth’s patrimony under the terms of her father’s will was rapidly put in hand. Catherine had been pregnant at the time of this incident, and on 30 August was delivered of a healthy baby girl. Unhappily, like Jane Seymour eleven years earlier, she did not survive the experience, dying of puerperal fever on 7 September. Whether Mary attended her friend’s obsequies or not we do not know; they had not met for about eighteen months. Nor do we know the princess’s reaction to her sister’s experience, except that she no doubt felt justified in having got out of Thomas’ way as quickly as possible. The lord admiral himself may have been distressed by his wife’s death, but if so his pain was of short duration. Within weeks he had renewed his pursuit of Elizabeth, this time speaking of marriage and the council woke up to the possibility of a serious challenge.[123]
Lord Thomas Seymour had been at odds with his brother since the beginning of the reign. He thought that the governorship of the king’s person should have been his by right, since he was no less the king’s uncle than the lord protector. He was not satisfied with a barony when his brother got a dukedom, and they had quarrelled bitterly over his marriage to Catherine. He had been spending his wife’s money building a support base for himself, and appears to have been trying to create a party in the House of Lords to have the protector’s patent annulled by statute. He had also been stalking Elizabeth. Just how substantial these ambitions were – and how treasonable – are still matters of dispute, but it would undoubtedly have been high treason to marry the princess without the council’s consent. He was arrested, interrogated and his activities investigated in January 1549. He was attainted, and a few weeks later executed.[124] None of this touched Mary, unless she was concerned for her sister’s reputation, which seems unlikely. In the early weeks of the reign, it transpired, Seymour had spoken of the possibility of marrying either princess, before he returned to Catherine, and it may well have been some suspicion of that which had caused her to decamp with such alacrity in April 1547.
Nevertheless 1549 was to be an eventful year in other respects. After considerable debate, and not a little posturing, in January the first Act of Uniformity was passed, the principal effect of which was to impose the English Book of Common Prayer across the land from the forthcoming Whitsun. This book was not radically Protestant, but it was in English and did replace the mass with a communion of the people, which was quite enough to outrage Mary and Van der Delft, and to put the princess on her mettle. As we have seen, the council had been worried about Mary’s intransigence since the summer of 1547, and by the end of 1548 was becoming highly irritated by the ostentatious nature of her traditional practices. Bishop Gardiner had been in and out of prison for his refusal to use the homilies, or to subscribe to the royal injunctions of 1547; at the beginning of 1549 he was in the Tower.[125]
Mary could not be dealt with in that way, and in any case had so far refused nothing, so the council waited, and hoped for the best. When Whitsunday arrived, she ordered mass to be celebrated with exceptional splendour in her chapel at Kenninghall, and she made sure that the whole countryside knew about it. On the same day at Ottery St Mary in Devon the congregation forced their curate (who seems to have had every intention of conforming to the law) to do the same, and within a few days the so-called ‘Prayer Book Rebellion’ had swept across the county. At first Mary’s highprofile defiance was taken the more seriously. On 16 June the council wrote a restrained letter of admonition, ‘giving her advice to be conformable and obedient to the observation of his Majesty’s laws’. Mass was to cease forthwith and only the approved order of communion used.[126] This was a red rag to a bull, and on the 22nd Mary replied furiously, denouncing the so-called law under which they were claiming to act, ‘a late law of your own making for the altering of matters of religion, which in my conscience is not worthy to have the name of law’. This was serious, because it meant that the princess was using the yardstick of her private conscience to decide which laws she would obey, and which not. This was as unacceptable a position to Edward’s council in 1549 as it had been to Henry VIII sixteen years before – and as unacceptable as it would be to any modern government.[127] The council was alarmed, as well it might be, and summoned her principal chaplain, John Hopton, and two of her officers (Rochester and Englefield) in the hope of being able to pressurise her through them. On 27 June she wrote again, disinge
nuously accusing the council of being ‘unfriendly’, and of ignoring her superior status.
MARY’S LETTER TO PROTECTOR SOMERSET AND THE COUNCIL
27 June 1549
My Lorde, I perceive by letters directed from you and other of the kinges majesties Counsaile, to my Controller, my Chaplaine, and master Englefielde my servant, that ye will them uppon their alleagaunce to repaire immediately to you, wherin you give me evident cause to chaunge my accustomed opinion of you all, that is to say, to thinke you careful of my quietnesse and wel doinge, considering how earnestly I wryte to you for the stay of two of them, and that not without very just cause. And as for master Englefield, as soone as he could have prepared himselfe, having his horses so farre off, although yee had not sent at this present, would have perfourmed your request. But indeede I am much deceived. For I had supposed ye would have waited and take[n] my letters in better part, if yee have received them; if not, to have tarried mine answere and I not to have found so little friendship, nor to have bene used so ungently at your hands in sending for him upon whose travail doth rest the only charge of my whole house, as I wryt to you lately, whose absence therefore shall be to me & my saide house no little displeasure, especially being so farre off. And besides all this, I doe greatly marvaile to see your wrytinge for him, and the other two, with suche extreame wordes of pearill to ensue towardes them in case they did not come, and specially for my Controller, whose charge is so great, that he canne not sodainly be meete to take a journey, which woordes in mine opinion needed not (unlesse it were in some verye just and necessarye cause) to any of mine, who taketh myselfe subject to none of you all. not doubting but if the kings maiestie my brother were of sufficient years to perceive this matter, and knewe what lacke and incommoditie the absence of my said officer should be to my house, his grace would have bene so good Lorde to mee, as to have suffered him to remaine where his charge is. Notwithstanding I have willed him at this time to repaire to you, commaunding him to returne foorthwith for my very necessities sake, and I have geven the like leave to my poore sicke prieste also, whose life I think undoubtedly shall be putte in hasard by the wet and colde painefull travaile of this journey. But for my parte I assure you all, that since the king my father, your late maister and verye good Lorde died I never tooke you for other than my frende; but in this it appeareth co[n] trary. And sauving I thought verily that my former letters shoulde have discharged this matter, I woulde not have troubled myselfe with writing the same, not doubting but you doe consider that none of you all would have bene contented to have bene thus used at your inferiours handes, I meane to have hadde your officer, or any of your servaunts sent for by a force (as yee make it) knowing no just cause why. Wherefore I do not a little marvaile, that yee had not this remembraunce towards mee, who always hath willed and wished you as well to doe as myselfe, and both have and will pray for you all as heartily as for mine own soule to almightye God, whome I humblye beseeche to illumine you with his holy spirite, to whose mercy also I am at a full poynt to commit my selfe, what so ever shall become of my body. And thus with my commendations I bid you all fare well. From my house at Kenninghal, the 27 of June [1549]
Youre frende to my power though you geve me contrary cause, Mary.
[John Foxe, Acts and Monuments (1583), p. 1333.]
The protector did not respond with the harsh measures that the situation required. There were two reasons for this. In the first place the revolt in the south-west was apparently spreading out of control, while Somerset was still sending such troops as he had available to the north, hoping to redeem the situation in Scotland. Mary had no connection with the rising in Devon. A few of those who were in a sense her servants were involved, but it could conveniently be assumed that they had acted without her knowledge or consent. Difficult as she was being, there was no suggestion of physical resistance. Nevertheless, there was an urgent need for the protector to review his priorities.
The second reason was, of course, the Emperor. As soon as he heard of the passage of the Act of Uniformity he sent instructions to Van der Delft to tell the protector that he would not tolerate his cousin being forced to ‘change her religion’. Even Henry had only belatedly and reluctantly told Charles to mind his own business, and the lord protector was in a much weaker position, especially in view of the threatening stance that was being adopted by Henry II of France. By March 1549 the ambassador was visiting Mary, as Chapuys had done, with messages of comfort and support from his master. On 10 May Charles instructed Van der Delft to demand written assurances from the English government that Mary might ‘notwithstanding all new laws and ordinances made upon religion … live in the observance of our ancient religion’, and that neither king nor Parliament would molest her.[128] Charles may have hoped by this gratuitous bullying to have brought about the overthrow of a regime that he found obnoxious, and which he was assured was extremely unpopular.
However, no self-respecting government could afford to submit to such treatment, and Somerset replied pointing out that Mary’s conformity was not, or not only, a question of her conscience, but also of the public order of the realm. A formal dispensation to ignore an Act of Parliament was therefore out of the question. He was, however, prepared to consider a compromise. In view of her status, and the tenderness of her conscience, he was prepared to allow her to retain mass privately, in her own chamber and in the presence only of her household servants, until the king came of age and took control of his sister’s conformity.[129] The ambassador huffed and puffed, and made further threats, but Charles was no more willing in 1549 than he had been in 1533 to proceed to coercion, and there the matter rested for the time being.
When a new rebellion – Kett’s peasant revolt – broke out in Mary’s backyard in July 1549 the Prayer Book was not an issue, and the princess was not involved, or suspected of involvement – indeed some of her own property was destroyed. However, as the protector got into increasing difficulties during July and August, the prospect of ‘regime change’ began to be surreptitiously canvassed. The full story of this conspiracy does not concern us here, and will probably never be completely understood, but it is clear that by August 1549 several members of the council had had enough of Somerset’s mixture of selfrighteousness and ineptitude. That self-righteousness had made him autocratic and unwilling to listen to advice. He did not exceed the powers that his colleagues had given him in March 1547, but he did behave with a conspicuous lack of tact, and occasionally forgot that he was the lord protector, not the king.[130] His ineptitude sprang partly from the same root. So conscious was he of the royal responsibility to protect the poor that he regularly forgot that his own position depended upon the support and collaboration of those who were not poor – his colleagues and the gentry of the counties. He had probably given Scotland too high a priority. That had made him slow to respond to the risings of the summer, and when he was mired in rebellion, the French at last declared war.
There were also some who were out of sympathy with Somerset’s religious policy, and inclined to agree with Mary and the imprisoned Stephen Gardiner. This last group, which included the earls of Arundel and Southampton (restored to the council in December 1548), and possibly the lord president, has always loomed large because they featured in that way in the accounts of Van der Delft, which are some of the principal sources for the events of these days. The ambassador believed that the main objective of the conspirators was the restoration of ‘true religion’ – by which he meant the mass. In September he reported that Mary had been secretly approached to assume the regency when the protector should be overthrown. She had, he declared, declined to become involved.[131] Van der Delft believed that the ringleader was the Earl of Southampton, and he was disappointed by the princess’s reaction; but it seems quite likely that she understood better than he did that Southampton was not the real leader, in spite of his grievance over losing the chancellorship, and that the main motive of the plotters was negative rather than positive. Their religious stance was stil
l to be revealed.
After a confrontation in early October, which involved the protector whisking a frightened king away to the defences of Windsor Castle, Somerset resigned his office in the face of the almost unanimous demands of the council, and upon certain conditions of immunity.[132] The office of lord protector was abolished. Mary may, or may not, have been approached again. If she was she did not respond, and executive authority reverted to the collective entity of the council. Van der Delft waited expectantly for ‘true religion’ to be restored and the imprisoned bishops – Stephen Gardiner and Edmund Bonner of London – to be released. Nothing happened. In theory the new situation should have placed executive authority in the hands of the president of the council, but the president was Lord St John, a distinguished but extremely elderly and canny civil servant, who had no desire for such exposure.
The ‘strong man’ who did gradually emerge after the coup was not Southampton but John Dudley, Earl of Warwick. Warwick had probably been the key man throughout. He had retained near London the army with which he had suppressed the East Anglian uprising in August, and that force gave the council a critical edge in its dealings with the protector. He had also been thought of until the last minute as a close ally of Somerset, and his leadership of the ‘London Lords’, the council members except for a few associated with Somerset, gave them a strong psychological advantage. As October turned into November, and the main preoccupation of the council was the defence of Boulogne, a low-key stalemate developed over religious policy. However, Southampton retreated from the council owing to ill health in mid-October, and by early November it was clear that Warwick’s supporters were in a majority.[133] Warwick supported continuing reform, and several new appointments were of like-minded men. Mary metaphorically shrugged her shoulders. She had never expected any improvement, she told Van der Delft, because ‘the people were so infected’ – an accurate conclusion upon a false premise. As worried Protestants plucked up courage again, Mary confided to the ambassador that she feared a fresh assault upon her own immunities, such as they were, and was beginning to think seriously of escape.