by Linda Porter
In truth, she had missed her opportunity.Yet it was a decision taken deliberately. The assertion that Mary would have been an ideal choice because she would not have interfered with the normal process of government is hard to justify. She was known for being a hard-headed woman of strong views, and it seems inconceivable that she would have been content to act as a royal figurehead. 15 Arundel was still in touch with her at the beginning of November, but she could not be persuaded. Though she had been a political outcast for most of her adult life, Mary was no shrinking violet. She would have done much to return her brother to the religion in which she herself had been raised.The reason she failed to grasp the nettle was dislike and distrust of one man above all: John Dudley. ‘The earl of Warwick’, she told Van der Delft in January 1550, ‘is the most unstable man in England. The conspiracy against the Protector has envy and ambition as its only motives.’16
Maybe she was allowing herself the luxury of demonstrating to an imperial diplomat that she had foreseen Warwick’s ascendancy and had been wise not to become embroiled in a dangerous political intrigue that could have damaged her reputation. By mid-December, the earl had emerged as the strongest man on the council and those who wanted to call a halt to further religious reform were in retreat.The very day that Mary indulged in her character assassination of Warwick, Wriothesley and Arundel were removed from the council.
Yet if, as seems likely, Mary had privately held this view of John Dudley for some time, it is hard to know why. Nor is it apparent that the antipathy was always mutual. Perhaps she viewed him with the same haughty disdain that many of her brother’s advisers inspired in her. In 1551, at the height of her persecution by Edward’s council, she would tell a deputation of Dudley’s colleagues: ‘you should show more favour to me for my father’s sake, who made the more part of you from almost nothing’. She never bothered to conceal her contempt for this upstart ruling class.17 But the princess’s remarks bring into sharp relief the new strongman himself, for Dudley was one of the most important servants of the Crown in the 16th century. As maligned after his death as Mary was after hers, he remains one of the most fascinating and elusive figures in an age full of intriguers. It has been said that Mary feared only two men in her life, her father and John Dudley. By 1553 she had every reason to hate and fear the man who was by then duke of Northumberland, but there is no obvious explanation for her determination to stay well away from him in 1549.
They had known each other, though hardly on close terms, since at least 1540, when Anne of Cleves came to England. During Anne’s brief marriage to Henry VIII, Dudley was her master-of-horse and Mary would have seen him at court. The only recorded instance of their having spent any time in each other’s company was when Dudley accompanied Mary to Windsor in 1541, at the time of Katherine Howard’s downfall.Though neither was inclined to indulge in small talk, perhaps Mary observed something then that displeased her. Despite Somerset’s reference to the bonds of a long friendship, Dudley did not socialise much and no one, apart from his devoted wife Jane and his family of eight surviving children (of whom six were sons, enough to cause envy in the unprolific Tudors), felt much affection for him. His childhood had been very nearly blighted by the execution of his father, an unpopular financial adviser to the first Tudor king, soon after Henry VIII’s accession. If he held a grudge it was suppressed and he worked very hard, over a long period, to secure his own advancement at Henry’s court. Often, he was frustrated by the slowness of his attainment of high office, but by the time Katherine Parr became queen, he was well on his way. Allied as he was to supporters of religious change, his beliefs may have been another reason Mary disliked him, though the depth of his religious feeling is hard to judge. He was known for a quick temper, and his hand would go to his sword when discussions in council irritated him. Ill health, which some thought was feigned, meant that meetings were often held at his London house, Ely Place, on the Strand. Perhaps this gave him greater control, bringing the other councillors to him and underlining his power, but it may well have been a response to the pressures of office.
None of this adequately explains Mary’s startling comment that he was the most unstable man in England. In reality, she was to find him uncomfortably consistent in his treatment of her for the next three years. As he bullied and tormented her in his attempts to deprive her of the mass, she came to despise him even more.
John Dudley took over the reins of power because he did not see his own future, or England’s, safe in conservative hands. And the country he now directed, whether from the council chamber or his bed at home, when stress overwhelmed him, was in grave need of a firm guiding hand. The wars had left a debt of £300,000 and inflation at 75 per cent was running out of control. The reassurance of centuries of religious practice had gone, leaving a gap in people’s daily lives that could not be filled by legislation or the accessibility of services in their native tongue. Edward VI and Mary, though occupying two ends of the religious spectrum, were sure of their faith. Most of the populace remained to be persuaded. Dudley saw with admirable clarity what must be done. This meant staunching the bleeding of resources for unwinnable wars and making peace with France and Scotland. So he gave Boulogne back to the French, in return for badly needed cash, and began negotiations for a marriage between Edward VI and Princess Elisabeth of France, daughter of Henry II. The king was enthusiastic, despite the obvious difficulties of his prospective wife’s religion.
As far as English politics were concerned, once his position was established, he aimed for conciliation with the duke of Somerset, who was restored to the council in April 1550. Two months later, Somerset’s daughter, Anne Seymour, married the younger John Dudley, Viscount Lisle, in a very public attempt to underline improved relations. But there was always a question mark over how the new balance of power would work out, and this extended to other members of the council, such as Arundel, who came and went pretty much at Dudley’s pleasure over the next few years.
For Mary and Charles V, however, there was nothing good in the new regime. A rapprochement between England and France was never going to endear Dudley to the emperor, and his commitment to continue with religious reform soon became clear, to Mary’s despair.18 He had made two influential enemies.This was unintentional in Charles’s case, but an inevitable result of England’s new foreign policy. Where Mary was concerned, the confrontation was deliberate. By March 155 0, the council realised it could not be rid of the problem Mary posed by arranging her marriage. Dom Luis of Portugal, the councillors said, had insufficient land and wealth ‘wherewith to provide a suitable estate for so great a lady and for their children’. A great lady she may have been, but she was also a great headache for Dudley. He saw her position as direct defiance of the rule of law. The practice of mass in her household was not to be tolerated. She must be made to submit.
Mary was not surprised but she was distressed. Her first thought was to appeal directly to her brother and pre-empt any moves to limit her freedom of religion. So though she did not like London, she came in the second week of February and was allowed, after two attempts, to see the king. The meeting did not give her the comfort she wanted and she came away filled with gloom. As she contemplated her situation, distress turned to desperation, and she became convinced that, since marriage was not an option, another, even more extreme course must be considered.
On the evening of Monday, 30 June 1550, three imperial warships arrived off the coast of Essex. Further out to sea, they were supported by four larger vessels. This little fleet, commanded by the Dutchman Cornelius Scepperus, had encountered ‘much bad weather’ as it crossed the North Sea, but as soon as the vessels anchored, the sea changed to a flat calm.The next day one of the ships made its way to Stansgate and a small boat, with two men in it, rowed ashore. They claimed to be grain merchants and took with them a sample of their corn, but when they got ashore they found things unnervingly quiet. There was no one to meet them and they were obliged to return to their ship without having spo
ken to any local people. They had, however, been observed, and by quizzical eyes.
People living round about, especially in the small port of Maldon at the head of the Blackwater estuary, knew of the rumours and wondered about the true motives of these Flemings who had materialised overnight. They were not convinced that the grain vessel was alone or that it had come with innocent intent.Though there was a long history of problems with Scottish pirates plundering the imperial merchant fleet, which might explain the need for an adequately defended ship, something about this vessel seemed wrong.The real purpose, they feared, was altogether more sinister. Nearby at Woodham Walter the Lady Mary had been in residence since early May. Her confrontation with the government was well known and the possibility of her attempting to flee England had been all the talk in this part of Essex for weeks. It was hard to keep anything secret in a large household, where people came and went and not everyone was trustworthy, even if they seemed devoted. Yet few people could have anticipated quite how the enterprise would finally be abandoned.
The saga of Mary’s abortive attempt to escape from England to what she hoped would be a secure haven in the Low Countries was well documented at the time. It has elements of almost surreal comedy: disguises, frantic attempts to keep something secret of which the authorities were well aware and the final, complete deflation of Mary’s refusal to seize the chance when offered. At its heart was a troubled woman under severe strain, who entertained the fantasy that creeps into the minds of many people who are stressed almost beyond their mental resources - that running away offers a simple solution to all their difficulties. It is less the act itself which matters, more its contemplation. Perhaps this explains the contradictory nature of Mary’s behaviour in the summer of 1550. A woman who had shown remarkable fortitude over so many years could not, for a time, cope with yet another assault. To call this weakness would be a harsh judgement of Mary, who could not forget the past. There must have been echoes of her father in the determination of John Dudley to bring her to heel. In 1536 she had everything taken from her: her mother, her status and, most damaging of all, her shattered conscience. Now, in 1550, another man, but this time no king, merely a servant of her misguided younger brother, was trying to take away one of the pivotal parts of her life, her religious faith. Mary had reinvented herself as the most prominent opponent of sweeping religious change but she did not know how great her following, outside her own affinity, might be. Neither did she want to be associated with violent disobedience to the king. This personal crisis, fed by terrible memories and fears for her own safety, reduced the proud princess Mary to observe, in her agony of mind: ‘I am like a little ignorant girl, and I care neither for my goods nor for the world, but only for God’s service and my conscience. I know not what to say; but if there is peril in going and peril in staying, I must choose the lesser of two evils.’19
Charles V also thought long and hard about whether, in agreeing to Mary’s repeated requests that he should furnish her with a means of escape, he was doing the right thing. As always with the emperor, his doubts about the wisdom of the enterprise were partly inspired by an uneasiness about whether he would actually be doing his cousin a service and partly overshadowed by political considerations. Aside from the hazardous nature of getting her away by ship, once gone she became financially dependent on him and could not serve his purpose by acting as the rallying force of principled opposition in England. He was also preoccupied with his preparations for leaving Brussels, which he did at the end of May, to go and take up residence at Augsburg. Ill and unhappy, beset with costly wars and rebellious subjects, this weary man who was losing his grip on his vast empire must have found Mary’s troubles little more than a minor irritation. His instinct, and his instructions to Van der Delft, pointed towards calming Mary down and persuading her to temporise. Eventually, he reluctantly agreed to help her.
The plan for Mary’s flight was put together over a two-month period between May and July 1550 and the princess was very much its moving force. She had convinced herself that not just her religion but her life was in danger. This was the answer she gave to Van der Delft, when he pointed out to her that, if the king died, her absence could deprive her of the crown and would probably ensure the triumph of religious change for good:‘If my brother were to die, I should be far better out of the kingdom; because as soon as he were dead, before the people knew it, they would despatch me too; there is no doubt of that, because you know that there is nobody about the king’s person or in the government who is not inimical to me.’ The problem with following the emperor’s advice on temporising was that her own, grim experience told her quite the reverse: ‘I fear I may tarry too long,’ she said. ‘When they send me orders forbidding me the mass, I shall expect to suffer as I suffered once during my father’s lifetime; they will order me to withdraw thirty miles from any navigable river or sea-port, and will deprive me of my confidential servants, and, having reduced me to the utmost destitution, they will deal with me as they please. But I will rather suffer death than stain my conscience.’ Her suspicion of the council was profound. They were ‘wicked and wily in their actions and particularly malevolent towards me’.20
As in her earlier correspondence with the emperor, Mary was probably overstating her case. But what matters is her utter conviction that those in power meant not just to restrict her but to destroy her. This visceral fear explains the contradictions in her position. She would suffer death for her faith and yet the reason she wanted to flee was that she was afraid she would be killed by order of Edward VI’s advisers; she was concerned for her household but willing to implicate them in her flight and leave them to their fate; she believed that she had a great deal of support at popular level but would not acknowledge that abandoning England would leave the people deprived of hope.
Mary had given some thought to the details of her escape.Van der Delft acknowledged that the first plan developed was Mary’s idea and he believed it could be made to work. Or perhaps it would be truer to say that he hoped it would work, because it relieved him of involvement, and the thought that he might be compromised alarmed him. Like Mary, he had a regard for his own personal security and that of his family. His desire to be of service to the princess was tinged with growing anxiety, especially as he was ill and arrangements were already in hand for him to leave England himself.
The essence of Mary’s scheme was that she should be as close to the sea as possible, to facilitate her escape by water. At the beginning of May 1550 she had moved from New Hall to Woodham Walter in Essex, and one part of the plan was already in place. The move could easily be explained. New Hall needed cleaning and with the summer season approaching, she wished to resume taking sea baths for her health. Her house was regularly provisioned by boat and the comings and goings of these supplies would provide ideal cover for a vessel organised by Robert Rochester, the controller of Mary’s household, to remove the princess from her native country. As with so many perilous undertakings, the devil of the plan was in the detail. Royal lady as she was, Mary did not initially contemplate going alone. She wanted with her ‘four of her ladies whom she trusts more than the rest’ (interesting to note that she evidently had reservations about some of them) plus Rochester himself and two unnamed gentlemen, one of whom was ‘very rich but would willingly give up all that he possesses to follow my lady to a place of safety’. Apart from these people, Mary would take nothing with her ‘except her rings and jewels. The plate she uses belongs to the king,’ wrote the ambassador, ‘as, I suppose the tapestries and other furniture do.’21
Van der Delft said that no one apart from himself, his secretary and Rochester knew of the princess’s plan. Whether that was true or not, it involved too many people to be practical.Then the possibility of a boat being procured in England evaporated. The month of May came and went with Mary still in Essex and still exhorting the ambassador and his master to help her leave. Matters stalled when the government introduced restrictions on all movements at night, so
that ‘no roads or cross-roads, no harbours or creeks, nor any passage or outlet’ escaped the vigilance of ‘good folk who had something to lose’.This was a reference to the possibility of further summer uprisings like those of the preceding year, but a secondary motive for the council may have been to restrict Mary and frustrate her possibility of flight.
The plan that was finally put into action took shape after Charles V had left Brussels and was approved by him on 25 June. Its driving force may have been his sister, Mary of Hungary, the regent of the Low Countries, who was more inclined to make decisions and take action. She also wanted to ensure that any repercussions were minimised, particularly in the event of failure.This meant waiting until Van der Delft had left, so he could not be implicated, and it also required that his successor, Jehan Scheyfve, a man of whom the regent did not think much, was kept completely in the dark. Thus it fell to Jehan Dubois, secretary to the imperial embassy in London, to take on the burden of managing the revised escape plan. He was more than equal to the task; in fact, he carried out his part of it in exemplary fashion. But it did not succeed.