Tudors (History of England Vol 2)

by Ackroyd, Peter

  In the following month the Speaker of the House of Commons came before the queen and her council. He presented her with a petition on the question of her marriage and then, in a long and prolix speech, he urged the queen to choose one of her own subjects as her spouse. It would not be fitting to choose someone from abroad, since a foreign prince would have other interests and other priorities. She started to her feet and in the course of a hasty and improvised reply she stated that ‘if you, our Commons, force upon us a husband whom we dislike, it may occasion the inconvenience of our death; if we marry where we do not love, we shall be in our grave in three months . . .’

  Yet others were already involved in the matter of marriage. Just nine days after her proclamation as queen the Spanish ambassador raised the question with her. Mary replied that she would willingly follow the advice of her cousin, Charles V, which meant that in practice she would have no hesitation in marrying a member of the Spanish royal family of which she was already a part. She was, indeed, half-Spanish. The most suitable of the male candidates was inevitably Philip, the eldest son of the king. This is what the Lords and Commons feared.

  Mary summoned the ambassador to her private chapel in the autumn of 1553, just as parliament was meeting; this was the sanctuary where she kept the Holy Sacrament and where she told the ambassador that ‘she had continually wept and prayed God to inspire her with an answer to the question of marriage’. She went down upon her knees and began to recite ‘Veni Creator’, a hymn from the Gregorian chant. It seems to have been at this point that she resolved to marry Philip. He was, in a sense, the natural choice. How could the queen marry an English subject?

  One possible English candidate had emerged. Edward Courtenay, great-grandson of Edward IV and heir to the House of York, had been imprisoned for the last fifteen years on trumped-up charges of treason; his Plantagenet blood was always a threat to the Tudor dynasty. Mary had released him, as a matter of honour, but had no intention of marrying him. ‘I will never, never marry him,’ she had told her council, ‘that I promise you, and I am a woman of my word. What I say, I do.’ He was not to her taste. Long imprisonment had rendered him feeble and supine. She had irrevocably turned to Spain.

  One evening the Spanish ambassador was received at court and, as he bowed to her, he whispered in her ear that he had credentials from the emperor to deliver to her. At the same time he passed her a letter that she quickly concealed. On the following evening he was brought in state by barge to the palace, bearing the official proposal for Mary to wed Philip. Some days later, as the queen was being led towards the royal chapel for Vespers, someone in the court shouted out ‘Treason!’ to general alarm. Mary was unperturbed but her younger sister was seized with fear and trembling.

  Princess Elizabeth had largely been a spectator in these marital proceedings. She had followed Mary in her sister’s triumphant entry into London, as a way of advertising their accord in rebutting the claims of a rival family, but the two were not united in any other way. Elizabeth was seen tacitly to represent the Protestant influence, and as such she soon came under suspicion. The French ambassador reported that ‘Elizabeth will not hear Mass, nor accompany her sister to the chapel’. She was considered to be of a proud and fiery spirit, like the other members of her family. The imperial ambassador, another conduit of news and rumour, decided that ‘the princess Elizabeth is greatly to be feared; she has a spirit full of incantation’.

  But she knew when to bend. On hearing that her refusal to hear Mass was being treated as insurrection, she fell upon her knees before the queen and begged to be given instruction in the Catholic faith. Yet her sincerity was doubted; it was said that she was too ready to consort with heretics. When she attended her first Mass, in the autumn of the year, she complained all the way to the chapel that she was tormented by a stomach ache, ‘wearing a suffering air’. She never wore the gorgeous rosary that her sister had given her. Mary let it be known that she did not want Elizabeth to succeed to the throne, but her only remedy was of course to bear her own children. The queen was now thirty-seven years old, spare and lean, with a thin mouth and commanding gaze; Elizabeth was twenty, with youth and beauty on her side. She might be a threat.

  That threat seemed to emerge in a rebellion at the beginning of 1554. When the envoys from Spain had arrived in January to seal the terms of the marriage treaty with Philip, the Londoners ‘nothing rejoicing, held their heads down sorrowfully’. Schoolboys pelted the Spanish delegation with snowballs. The terms of the treaty were announced on 14 January and, although they restricted Philip’s role in the determination of policy, a chronicler reported that ‘almost each man was abashed, looking daily for worse matters to grow shortly after’. Religious, as well as political, discontent was in the air. By the end of 1553 the Mass and the Latin offices were decreed to be the only legal forms of worship. In December, at the close of parliamentary proceedings, a dead dog was thrown through the window of a royal chamber; it had been shaved with a tonsure like a monk. On another occasion a dead cat was found hanging in Friday Street, wearing Romish vestments; it had between its paws a piece of bread like a ‘singing cake’ or sacramental host.

  The leaders of the Protestant cause now began to act in concert; among them was Sir Thomas Wyatt, the son of the poet, and the duke of Suffolk together with his three brothers. Suffolk himself was of course the father of Jane Grey, the queen of nine days. Edward Courtenay, perhaps angry at his rejection by Mary, joined them. They were in league with the French ambassador, whose country was much affronted by the queen’s decision to marry the heir of the Spanish crown. Some insurgents were simply opposed to the Spanish presence, while others were convinced reformers who were dismayed at the return to Catholicism. A party of the rebels had in fact been members of the military establishment under Northumberland and Edward VI. Cornwall and Devonshire were supposed to be the first regions to rise; Wyatt would carry his native county of Kent, and Suffolk would stir the Midlands. All of the armies would then converge upon London, where they hoped for a happy welcome.

  The conspirators remained in London for the first two weeks of the year, but in that period Edward Courtenay gave signs of indecision. He professed to believe that the queen was about to marry him, after all, and he lingered in the purlieus of the court; then he ordered a lavish costume of state, and spoke unwisely about what he knew. The chancellor, Stephen Gardiner, interviewed him and discovered much about the plot. Gardiner summoned one of the insurgents, Sir Peter Carew, to London. Carew fell into a panic and tried to incite his native city of Exeter; Exeter did not rise, and Carew fled to France.

  Wyatt, thrown into confusion by this unanticipated and unwelcome news, called the people of Kent to rebellion. On 25 January the church bells of the county rang with the signal for alarm, and a proclamation was issued to the effect that the Spanish army was crossing the seas to conquer England. Wyatt seized the cannon from the ships moored in the Medway and brought them into his stronghold at Rochester. The queen had professed no unease in the first days of the revolt. ‘Let the prince come,’ she said, ‘and all will be well.’ But her position was not safe. She had no army, and she feared that many of her council were secretly eager that the rebellion might succeed. The city agreed to give her 500 men from their trained bands, as much to preserve the capital as to safeguard the queen.

  The king of France had promised to send eighty vessels to assist the insurgents, and the news somehow reached the English court. The French ambassador was closely watched and one of his couriers was arrested. He was carrying some coded messages from the ambassador himself, and a copy of a letter from Lady Elizabeth to her sister. There was no treason here, but it was nonetheless suspicious. Why should the French king be interested in one of the princess’s letters?

  The duke of Norfolk led the trained bands of London against Rochester but, as he approached the bridge, he saw to his horror that his men were deserting to Wyatt’s side. They cried out ‘A Wyatt! A Wyatt!’ This was the familiar phrase
of acclamation. ‘We are all Englishmen!’ Norfolk and a few commanders galloped off in fear of their lives. Wyatt then appeared on the bridge. ‘As many as will tarry with us,’ he said, ‘shall be welcome. As many as will depart, let them go.’ So he gained 300–400 men, together with their weapons. The rebellion seemed set to succeed. If Wyatt had marched to London immediately, the gates might have been opened to him.

  The queen, in her defenceless position, remained resolute and defiant. She rode through the streets of the city to the Guildhall, where she met an assembly of citizens. She had a deep voice, often compared with that of a man, and piercing eyes that could command respect as well as fear. She spoke to them from the steps of the hall. She was the lawful queen of England. She appealed to the love and loyalty of Londoners against a presumptuous rebel who intended ‘to subdue the laws to his will and to give scope to rascals and forlorn persons to make general havoc and spoil’. She also promised to call a parliament that would consider the suitability of Philip as her consort; if the Lords and Commons rejected him, then she would think of him no more.

  Her courage and her bearing impressed the Londoners. On the following day 25,000 armed citizens came to her defence against the encroachments of Wyatt and his men. He had come up to Greenwich from Rochester but, on arriving on the south bank by London Bridge, he found the gates closed against him. He was declared to be a traitor and a ransom of £100 was placed on his head. In response he wore his name, in large letters, upon his cap.

  He could derive no comfort from the position of his confederate, the duke of Suffolk, whose attempt to raise the Midlands had ended in failure; he had fled to one of his estates, but his hiding-place was betrayed by his gamekeeper. His ally in the Midlands rebellion had been Lord John Grey, uncle of the unfortunate Jane Grey; he had concealed himself for two days, without food or drink, in the hollowed trunk of an ancient tree. He, too, was discovered. The Greys were undone.

  Wyatt stood irresolute before London Bridge, now barred, while the guns on the Tower were trained against him. There was no way to cross the river. After much hesitation and diversity of counsel Wyatt determined to ride with his host to Kingston Bridge, from where he could then march back on London; his friends in the city had promised him a welcome. So on the following morning he rode out with 1,500 men, together with some cannon from the Medway ships, and at four in the afternoon he reached Kingston. He found the bridge to be in part broken down, with a small guard on the opposite bank; the guard fled, and Wyatt caused the bridge to be repaired with moored barges. Then he marched once more upon London.

  The queen was woken at two or three in the morning, and told that her barge was waiting to take her to the safety of Windsor Castle. ‘Shall I go or stay?’ she asked those closest to her. The Spanish ambassador offered the best advice. ‘If you go,’ he told her, ‘your flight will be known, the city will rise, seize the Tower and release the prisoners. The heretics will massacre the priests, and Elizabeth be proclaimed queen.’ Mary saw the force of his argument.

  At nine in the morning Wyatt led his now exhausted men up the hill at Knightsbridge, but a force of the queen’s cavalry divided them near Hyde Park Corner. Wyatt had lost his rearguard but he pushed forward along the road that is now Pall Mall; some citizens were gathered to watch him, and made no sign. They parted to let the insurgents through their midst. Some of the courtiers were alarmed at this acquiescence, and cries of ‘Treason!’ were soon ringing through the palace at Whitehall. ‘Lost! Lost! All is lost!’ The queen replied that, if some would not fight for her, she would go out and fight for herself. She would be happy to die with those who served her.

  It did not come to that. Wyatt and the remnant of his forces made their slow way along the Strand and Fleet Street towards the old city. Yet the gates of Ludgate had been closed against him. ‘I have kept touch,’ he said in his despair. He sat down upon a bench outside Belle Sauvage Yard (now known simply as Bell Yard) while his companions scattered in the side streets and alleys off Ludgate Hill. When a part of the queen’s cavalry galloped towards him, he surrendered his sword and was taken into custody.

  In the days after the rebellion, gallows were erected in all the principal sites of London from Smithfield to Tower Hill. Some of the rebellious soldiers were hanged outside their doors. ‘There has never been such hanging,’ the French ambassador wrote, ‘as has been going on here every day.’ Yet mercy sometimes prevailed amid the slaughter. On 22 February some 400 men were brought before the queen with halters around their necks, whereupon she pardoned them all.

  Lady Jane Grey had remained in the Tower ever since the accession of Mary and in other circumstances could no doubt also have been spared. The treachery of her father changed her situation with dramatic effect. The queen had hardened her heart against her and all her family. The old abbot of Westminster tried to convert the young woman to the Roman communion, but she withstood all of his appeals. She was taken to Tower Green, quietly praying until she reached the scaffold; she calmly ascended the steps and told the spectators that she had broken the law by accepting the crown but that she was innocent of any evil intention. She recited the Miserere psalm, ‘Have mercy upon me, O God’, and then let down her hair, while making sure that her neck was uncovered. ‘I pray you, dispatch me quickly,’ she said to the executioner. And as she knelt she asked him, ‘Will you take it off before I lay me down?’

  ‘No, madam.’

  She tied a handkerchief about her eyes, and then began feeling for the block. ‘What shall I do? Where is it?’ One of the bystanders guided her to it, and she laid down her head. Her husband, her father and her uncles were also beheaded.

  There was one who had invited suspicion but had as yet escaped punishment. Princess Elizabeth had remained out of harm’s way at Ashridge House, in Hertfordshire, where she awaited events. It had become clear that Wyatt’s rebellion had been intended to set her upon the throne in the place of her sister, but there was no clear evidence of her involvement in the plot. Her confidential servants were interrogated in the Tower with the threat of the rack hanging over them. She herself was summoned to London, after pleading illness, and on 18 February she was carried in a litter to the capital. She passed through the streets of London dressed entirely in white, as a token of her innocence, and her pale face was described by the Spanish ambassador as ‘proud, lofty and superbly disdainful’. He, as well as his master, was pressing for her execution. Sensational news spread of a miraculous voice in a London wall. When anyone called ‘God save the queen’ there came no response; but if the cry of ‘God save the Lady Elizabeth’ was made, a voice replied ‘So be it’. The credulity of crowds is never-ending. Of course it was a hoax concocted by a serving girl.

  The queen refused to see her sister, and Elizabeth was given a suite of closely guarded rooms in the palace at Whitehall. She remained in this state of confinement for some weeks, but at the beginning of April she was interviewed by the royal council. The councillors accused her of complicity in the rebellion, to which charge she made an indignant denial; in this defiance she never once wavered. It was finally agreed that she should be removed from Whitehall to the Tower and, when the news was broached to her, she fell ‘in heavy mood’. It is not hard to understand the reasons for her desolation. Her mother had been taken to the Tower as a prelude to execution, and it seemed more than likely that Elizabeth would share her fate. She begged time to compose a letter to the queen in which she lamented that she should be ‘condemned without answer and due proof, which it seems that I now am: for that without cause proved, I am by your council from you commanded to go unto the Tower, a place more wonted for a false traitor than a true subject’. She went on to declare that ‘I never practised, counselled, nor consented to anything that might be prejudicial to your person any way’.

  Mary did not reply. ‘Very well then,’ Elizabeth is reported to have said. ‘If there be no remedy I must be contented.’ She was taken by barge to the Tower and came ashore by the drawbridge. ‘Her
e landeth as true a subject,’ she declared to her guards and her gaolers, ‘as true a subject, being prisoner, as ever landed at these stairs.’ It was a day of heavy rain and in her dejection she sat down upon a stone.

  ‘Madame,’ the lieutenant of the Tower said, ‘you were best to come out of the rain; for you sit unwholesomely.’

  ‘It is better sitting here than in a worse place, for God knoweth, I know not whither you will bring me.’

  She was escorted within the fortress, as all the doors were locked and barred behind her. She could not be sure that she would ever see the outer world again. At a later date she told the French ambassador that she was in such despair that she considered writing to her sister with the request that she should be beheaded with a sword, like her mother, rather than an axe. The rigours of her confinement were soon relaxed a little; by the middle of April she was allowed to walk on the ‘leads’ of her prison house and enjoy the Tower garden. Two guards always walked behind her, and two before her. The other prisoners were enjoined ‘not so much as to look in that direction while her grace remained therein’.

  She was interrogated five days after her confinement. What was her connection with Wyatt and the other rebels? Had she received letters or messages from them? She denied all knowledge of them and of their activities. She proclaimed her innocence and demanded to see proof of her treason. There was none. ‘My lords,’ she said, ‘you do sift me very narrowly.’ She preserved her calm and authoritative demeanour; danger had taught her to dissemble and prevaricate.