by David Loades
In some ways the Church (the burnings excepted) was still doing well in the last nine months of Mary’s reign, a period that saw the publication of Thomas Watson’s Wholesome and Catholic Doctrine, one of the most effective pastoral works of the reign. There is still some evidence of a recovering piety among ordinary people, not least in bequests to parish churches and refounded religious houses. But the shadow of papal disfavour continued to hang over the whole enterprise.[382]
11
MARY & ELIZABETH
When Philip left England for the second and last time in July 1557, Mary was left pretty much to her own devices. Charles V had retreated to San Yuste, the pope was hostile, and her old and faithful servant Robert Rochester died in November. Her great personal props and supports in this isolation were Susan Clarencius, another old and faithful servant, and her cousin Reginald Pole.
Susan Clarencius is not very visible after Mary’s marriage, except in so far as she received a number of small but lucrative rewards in the form of lands, wardships and rectories (allowing her to draw the tithes from certain parishes). She inveigled a coach and horses out of the Venetian ambassador, in return no doubt for the favour of access,[383] and can be glimpsed taking money off Sir William Petre while she entertained him at cards as he waited in the privy chamber to be received. She exchanged New Year gifts with Mary in 1557, but that list was governed by the strictest protocol and tells us nothing of Mary’s degree of intimacy with her servants. More revealing perhaps is the fact that she was able to write to the Countess of Bedford with news of her husband’s ‘valiantness’ on campaign with the king before any official despatch had mentioned him. On 25 July 1558, St James’ Day (and the anniversary of the royal marriage), she even took delivery of a consignment of flags and other images intended for a court celebration of the saint.[384] These may well have been displayed in a public procession of some kind, but the relevant pages of Henry Machyn’s diary are missing and no other chronicler mentions it. As evidence of a close relationship, this does not amount to much, but we have John Foxe’s testimony to the fact that she was ‘most familiar’ with the queen, and was one of those who attended her on her deathbed.
In a sense Pole is much more visible because of his ecclesiastical authority, but the evidence of his personal relations with Mary is virtually all oblique or circumstantial. Philip thought highly of Pole’s influence over his wife, but was never explicit about how that influence was exercised. There are occasional references to his good offices as a councillor, usually in a clerical context, but he appears to have played almost no part in the secular government, which was the queen’s main preoccupation.[385] Pole lived at Lambeth Palace, just over the river from Whitehall, so it is not surprising that his comings and goings to the court attracted little attention. On 15 July 1557 Henry Machyn noted that ‘the Queen’s grace dined at Lambeth with my lord cardinal Pole’ on the eve of one of her regular moves to Richmond, which suggests that visits in that direction were not common.[386] On St Andrew’s Day in the same year he accompanied Mary from St James’ to Whitehall, where after mass Sir Thomas Tresham was created master of the Order of St John in England, ‘and iiii knights of Rodes made’. It was on this occasion, after dinner, that Pole notably preached in the presence of ‘all [the] juges and bysshopes’.[387]
However, this was all in the way of ecclesiastical duty, and does not tell us much about their personal relationship. When Mary made her will on 30 March 1558, she named Pole as the chief executor (leaving him £1,000 for his pains), a role that should probably be seen as that of a trusted friend rather than an ex officio function of the Archbishop of Canterbury.[388] When Pole made his own will on 4 October, he requested his executors ‘to inform the Queen concerning this will, and to entreat her to show me the same favour when I am dead as she did in all my affairs while I was alive’, which is correct but hardly effusive.[389] Neither left any ‘memorial’ to the other, as Mary very conspicuously did to Philip, and this suggests a close professional association rather than warm personal friendship. Whether the cardinal ever acted as the queen’s confessor we do not know.
When Mary returned to London after Philip’s departure, she seems to have retreated into her shell. Apart from the state opening of Parliament on 20 January 1558, and the relevant high mass, there are almost no mentions of her appearance, and the revels accounts tell a similar story. They show no sign of activity at all between June and December 1557, and the total Christmas expenditure amounted to £36 4s 0d.[390] Nothing at all seems to have been spent on props or new costumes, which suggests a very low level of activity, and no originality whatsoever. ‘Masks, plays and other pastimes’ are mentioned, but nothing is specified, and there is no reference to anything being created for the occasion. For Candlemas in the same year the costs were even more modest: £18 2s 0d. In fact the last entertainment of the reign for which any description survives was a ‘great mask’ of Almains (i.e. Germans), pilgrims and Irishmen, which took place at Whitehall on 25 April 1557; in other words, while Philip was still in England. This seems to have accounted for a large part of the £151 17s 7d spent in that financial year.[391] Mary seems to have lacked all enthusiasm for such capers, although the fact that she again believed herself to be pregnant early in 1558 may offer a partial explanation. When the king was away, no one else was in a position to act as cheer leader for the regime, and the royal magnificence was veiled. On New Year’s Eve 1558 ‘there came a lord of misrule from Westminster’ into London with a suitable retinue, but there is no certainty that this had any connection with the court.[392]
When Giacomo Soranzo, the Venetian ambassador, left England for another posting in May 1557, he wrote (as was customary) a full description of England for the benefit of his successor, and this contained a detailed description of Mary herself.[393] This offers as much evidence as we are likely to obtain about her appearance and main characteristics, but of course Soranzo had no access to her private person, and did not apparently know anyone who had. ‘She is of low rather than middling stature,’ he commenced, but clean limbed and with ‘no part of her body deformed’. Her frame was spare and delicate, unlike either her father or her mother who (apparently) had run to fat in middle age. Where young Mary had been considered a beauty, her present wrinkles were caused more by anxiety than by age, although the effect was to make her look older than her real years (forty-one at this point). ‘Her aspect,’ he continued, ‘is very grave’ (nel resto molto grave), with eyes so piercing that they inspired fear in anyone who was scrutinised by them. He admitted that this was slightly deceptive, as she was very short-sighted and had to hold any book or document close to her face in order to be able to read it. Her ‘piercing eyes’ may therefore have been rather less perceptive than Soranzo was willing to admit. Indeed it is unlikely that she could see anything very clearly at a distance of more than a few feet. Spectacles were not unknown as a remedy for such a deficiency by this time, but either her physicians did not wish to advise them, or the queen herself was averse to the idea – a touch of vanity perhaps. Her voice, with which he must have been very familiar, was rough and loud, ‘almost like a man’s’, and audible at a considerable distance. She was, he concluded, a ‘seemly woman, never to be loathed for ugliness’, which, given the courtly world within which he was operating, was rather less than enthusiastic.
Her mind, he went on, was quick. She was able to comprehend ‘whatever is intelligible to others’. In case this should also seem to be faint praise, he makes clear that the ‘others’ referred to were male, and that this constituted ‘a marvellous gift for a woman’. She understood five languages, he wrote (somewhat optimistically), and spoke English, Latin, French and Spanish. Italian she understood but did not speak. Mary’s competence in Spanish is somewhat controversial, because other contemporary opinions do not agree with the Venetian in this respect, and it is unclear what she got from her mother and what from Philip.[394] It is also probable that he got it by hearsay as he did not speak Spanish h
imself, and his conversations with the queen were conducted in Latin. The fact that her intelligent responses ‘surprised everyone’ is more a comment on the times than on the queen, because there is plenty of evidence that Mary was (and always had been) an intelligent and highly educated woman.
For the sharpness of her political perceptions, on the other hand, there is less supporting evidence, because her judgement was so often derailed by her conscience – a matter upon which Soranzo did not see fit to comment. The stubbornness which we know from earlier episodes and other evidence was one of her defining characteristics, and Soranzo glossed it as courage in 1557. She would never ‘display or commit any act of cowardice or pusillanimity’, showing thereby a ‘wonderful grandeur and dignity’ becoming a princess of such a noble house. He then went on to expatiate upon the magnificent determination with which she had defended the true faith against the machinations of her brother’s councillors.
A lot of this is fairly predictable, but the ambassador also writes of her more humdrum qualities, and in so doing gives some insight into her daily routine and habits at this time. She was expert, he noted, in ‘woman’s work’ – that is embroidery and needlework of every kind. She was an accomplished musician, playing expertly upon the clavichord and the lute to a level that astonished professional musicians, although, he notes, ‘now she plays rarely’. In some respects she was ‘much like other women’, being sudden and passionate. She was also mean over small things – a vice not altogether becoming in a bounteous queen – which may have reflected some dissatisfaction with his own parting gift, although he nowhere hints at that.
Above all, according to Soranzo, Mary was exceptionally pious. Few women in the world, royal or otherwise, were more assiduous in their prayers than she was, ‘never choosing to suspend them for any impediment whatsoever’. She regularly kept the canonical hours with her chaplains, either in a public church, or in her chapel or closet, and meticulously observed all the feasts and fasts of the Church, ‘precisely like a nun and a religious’ (apunto come una monaca et una religiosa).
Soranzo clearly intended to be thorough, so what he does not say is as significant as what he does. Nowhere does he commend her love of learning, or suggest that she patronised either artists or scholars – let alone scientists, as her father had done. Indeed her difficulties with reading may well have curtailed any tendencies that she had in that direction. Nor does he say anything about her application to business, which had been elaborated upon by earlier commentators. Soranzo had been in England for some time, so his observations did not only describe the Mary of early 1557, and it may well be that he was taking her industriousness for granted. On the other hand perhaps, as with her music, she was applying herself less rigorously. If that was the case, it was not because she was indulging in dancing or revelry. Neither aspect of court life merits a mention in the Venetian report, and that is probably because they were not considered noteworthy – even while Philip was present. Making due allowance for the conventions within which he was operating, Soranzo’s portrait of the mature queen is that of a very sober, very pious woman, of masculine intelligence but faded beauty, who no longer allowed herself the smallest indulgence, even in the music that she had once embraced so wholeheartedly.
In her younger days Mary had gambled enthusiastically, wagering money, horses and even meals on bowling, the turn of a card or the fall of a dice.[395] This continued after her accession, and there are several references to ‘passdice’, but by 1557 such frivolities seem to have been put behind her. Not only does Soranzo not mention them, but there is no other evidence to suggest that the habit continued. There was, of course, plenty of gambling going on within the court, but either Mary was unaware of it, or turned a blind eye. Bored courtiers had to do something while they waited on her pleasure, and presumably it was better (and safer) than flirting. Mary had once been a keen hunter, and had flown her hawks with enthusiasm as a girl. Now the kennels and the toils were dutifully maintained, but no one pretended that the queen was very interested. She accompanied Philip on the first occasion when he went after the great buck in June 1557, but the second (and successful) expedition he made on his own.
Nowadays we would describe Mary during the last two years of her life as stressed and tense, unable (seemingly) to relax, or to enjoy those modest pleasures in which she had once been seen to indulge. Yet there was a softer side to her. She did not pray or ply her needle alone, and the women who were close to her and shared her waking hours (when she was not closeted with councillors or ambassadors) became deeply attached to her. Jane the Fool still haunted the presence chamber like an amiable ghost, still presumably plying her trade (whatever exactly that may have been) and still receiving medication for her periodic ailments.[396] Mary may have been depressive, or perhaps her health was declining long before anyone thought fit to comment upon it, but there is a distinct lack of animation about her after Philip’s second departure. She seems to have suffered from periodic fits of bitterness, and it was commented that separation was doubly grievous to ‘a woman naturally tender’ – not a description that we can recognise from Soranzo, but probably just as close to the truth. This bitterness is particularly apparent in her hostile relations with Elizabeth, whom she claimed was not only a dissembler and a heretic (which she was), but also the ‘illegitimate child of a criminal’.[397] Her own childlessness may well have been the affliction that preyed most on Mary’s mind, because this most pious of queens was singularly short on cheerful resignation, but her calculated antagonism to her sister did nothing to alleviate the situation.
Shortly after Mary’s death, the chief gentleman of her privy chamber, John Norris, drew up a memorandum for the guidance of his successor.[398] Norris had been described by Edward Underhill as a ’great papist’, and he withdrew into private life on Elizabeth’s accession, but his guidelines offer a valuable insight into the workings of the privy chamber over which he had presided. Norris might be described as a ‘master of ceremonies’. He even claimed to have had full control over the celebrations at the time of Mary’s wedding, a claim that the lord chamberlain would surely have challenged – if he had ever found out about it. Most of Norris’s document records the protocol that had been observed in Henry VIII’s time at the various festal days of the Church. For example:
Also it is to be knowen that the king offrith one Christenmas daie xxs; that is to saie on noble to be hadd out of the comptinghouse and to be delyvred by the treasorer of householde and two nobles to be delyveryd from the treasorer of the kinges chamber for the tyme being …[399]
There is no certainty that Mary followed these elaborate routines, but given the general conservativism of the court it is very probable that she did. Also, if these practices had been superseded, Norris would surely have mentioned it, since his intention was to provide guidance for the future.
In spite of its importance, Norris’s position had one major drawback from our point of view – he had no access to the inner sanctum, which was female territory. When the queen retreated to her bedchamber, no man could go beyond the door. To the privy chamber itself, a total of nine men had access: three gentlemen, three gentlemen ushers (who included Norris) and three grooms. No other man could even go so far unless specifically summoned, so that no councillor (not even Reginald Pole) could intrude upon the queen’s presence uninvited. Consequently, although we have some patchy evidence of the conduct of ordinary business, we have absolutely no idea of what happened ‘beyond the door’. It seems likely that Mary used these privy chamber gentlemen as a protection when she was in low spirits. There is some evidence for that in the aftermath of her first false pregnancy, and rather more in the spring of 1558, when she was recovering from the second (see below).
Henry VII had followed earlier custom in that he dined in the great hall on formal occasions, when the whole court would have been in attendance. At other times he ate in the great chamber, where his principal officers ‘kept their tables’ and only the chamber se
rvants had access.[400] His son virtually abandoned the great hall, keeping his ‘Board of State’ in the great chamber, and other meals in the privy chamber – a practice that Edward VI seems to have maintained. In the latter part of her reign Mary seems to have retreated entirely. According to Norris:
There (the Privy Chamber) her meal was set and one of the ordinary servants without did go for it when he was commanded by a gentleman usher and brought it to the door and there the ladies and gentlemen did fetch it …[401]
Presumably the privy chamber gentlemen waited at table, but there is no suggestion that anyone other than the occasional invited guest would have shared the queen’s meal. Not even the privy chamber servants dined ‘within’, unless they were on duty. The rest of the privy chamber dined ‘with mistress Clarencius in her Chamber’, or in another chamber set aside for the purpose. Susan Clarencius regularly received two ‘messes’, which would have fed about a dozen people, and the off-duty grooms another mess between them. There is no suggestion that ‘bouge of court’ (the right to be fed at the monarch’s expense) was much reduced by these measures, so presumably the head officers continued to keep their tables in the great chamber, and the ordinary servants ate either in the hall, or, more likely, took their rations to their own quarters.[402] Meals as public spectacles, or as ‘bonding sessions’ between the monarch and the court, were not on the agenda by this time.