by Linda Porter
So Jane could not avoid what she most certainly did not desire. On 10 July, at three o’clock in the afternoon, she was brought downriver by barge from Syon House to take up residence as queen in the Tower of London. Her mother carried her train and her husband walked beside her, apparently paying her a great deal of attention. A small crowd had gathered, but it was quietly curious, not full of vociferous joy. Most of them probably had no idea who she was, and even those who knew had never seen her before.
The onlookers saw a slim 16-year-old, short, like the cousin whose claim to the throne she denied, and with the same red hair. She was dressed, as if to reinforce her credentials as the rightful queen, in the Tudor colour of green, richly set off with gold. It was a fine symbolic gesture, rendered all the more touching by the need to raise the diminutive Jane on platform shoes, so that she could be better seen.
Her childhood had been short, strict and loveless. Jane’s mother, who, as Frances Brandon, passed pleasant summer days with Princess Mary, was an overweight heiress with none of the beauty or wit of her own mother, the other Mary Tudor. In portraits she looks harsh and sullen. Yet her marriage seems to have been happy enough. Her husband, Henry Grey, was a crony of Northumberland’s, and his loyalty was rewarded by the granting of the duchy of Suffolk, the title that had belonged to Frances’s father. There seemed little likelihood, alas, of his passing it on.The sons born to the couple had not survived; Jane was the eldest of three sisters. As small children they were all subjected to physical chastisement and a family atmosphere notably lacking in affection. Frances was not a sentimental mother and she consistently put her husband’s interests before those of her children. The girls’ manners, however, were carefully watched and they were under strict instruction to refrain from such unladylike failings as breaking wind at mealtimes. Not surprisingly, Jane grew up to be a rather humourless girl, though she was very well educated. Contemporaries described her intellect and scholarship in glowing terms, though many of these accounts were written after her death. She was also committed to the new religion.
As the great-niece of Henry VIII, she would always be an attractive target for the unscrupulous, politically ambitious, new men of mid-Tudor England. Her parents never made the slightest effort to protect her from the predators of the court if they thought they saw an advantage. Yet neither of them had any political acumen.They were perfectly content when Jane was removed from the family at the age of ten to join the Lady Elizabeth in the household of Thomas Seymour and Katherine Parr. Jane found the dowager queen an affectionate guardian and probably enjoyed the respite from the strictures of home life. Fortunately for her, she was too young to receive the kind of dubious attentions from Seymour that brought Elizabeth such trauma when he was disgraced. There is no record that the cousins spent much time in each other’s company or that they had any great feeling for each other, but Elizabeth must have known her better than Mary did.
Jane is often represented as an unwilling victim, an unhappy child-bride and a reluctant queen.The truth is less straightforward.There was nothing uncommon in being married at 16 in those times and no one expected a love match. Jane’s resentment of the Dudleys was more likely the result of being second choice. Northumberland had wanted an alliance with the powerful Clifford family, in the north of England, but the earl of Westmorland would not oblige. Jane was proposed as a last-minute substitute and it was probably the timing and manner of her union with the duke’s son which offended her, rather than the lad himself.Their temperaments were very different, Guildford being something of a mother’s boy and generally immature, whereas Jane was self-contained and prim. The Dudleys were a very close-knit family, in complete contrast to the Greys, and Jane does not seem to have warmed to the duchess of Northumberland, the matriarch of the clan. It is true that the duchess had a strong influence on the household, but Jane was not her first daughter-in-law and she had girls of her own, so was experienced in guiding young people. Since 1548 she had been in bad health, and as she was not a frivolous woman, but a faithful follower of the evangelical religious ideas she had picked up in the service of Anne Boleyn, she and Jane might have been expected to get on well. But they did not.
None of this is especially surprising in any marriage, let alone an arranged 16th-century match. Jane and Guildford might well have worked their way through this initial sticky patch if they had been given the opportunity. Instead their relationship, brought about in haste and destroyed by political developments beyond their control, was never allowed a chance to blossom.There is no way of knowing whether it was even consummated.
She may not have sought the throne but Jane believed, as did Mary, that God’s will must be done. In her brief reign of nine days, there are signs that she had an aptitude for government and that she knew her own mind. All the advantage seemed to be with her. The political and religious establishment was firmly on her side; prominent citizens of London swore their support and Bishop Ridley preached to the people at St Paul’s Cross, with a clear public relations message. He underlined that both Mary and Elizabeth were bastards and since neither was married, the possibility of foreign domination by any European husband they might choose was a dangerous threat. Queen Jane was married to an Englishman and so the realm was secure. It was an argument that had been rehearsed before, by the dead king, but it does not seem to have changed any minds. Ridley’s audience was notably unwilling to show any display of public approbation for this queen who had been imposed on them. Like everyone else, the bishop assumed that, though Jane was the one with the claim to the throne, Guildford would be named king alongside her. Ridley did not know that Jane had already refused this possibility, greatly irritating Northumberland and upsetting her husband so much that he had run off to his mother for comfort.
Northumberland may have felt that she would change her mind, after a few days of reflection. But time was not on his side. He could not force a swift change of heart on her and there were other, more pressing considerations. The duke appeared, at Edward’s death, to have all the power and authority necessary to fulfil Edward VI’s wishes and maintain his own position as the de facto ruler of the country. But he had overlooked, or perhaps misjudged, the one factor that would have made him impregnable. He had failed to secure Mary herself.The princess’s departure from Hunsdon caught the council off guard. Their immediate response was to send out letters to the lords lieutenant and other worthies of the counties branding her as a potentially subversive outcast.This was the first shot in a battle for hearts and minds in which Mary engaged as fully - and more successfully - as her opponents.Then, as now, public opinion was important, and there was a scramble to influence it. But initially the council were in an uncomfortable position, caught on the back foot. When they wrote, on 8 July, Edward VI had been dead for two days, but there was no official announcement yet of his demise and Jane Grey had not been proclaimed. Obviously Mary needed to be discredited, and quickly, but nothing specific could be said about the cause. ‘This shall be to signify you’, the councillors wrote,that the Lady Mary being at Hunsdon is suddenly departed with her train and family toward the sea coast of Norfolk, upon what occasion we know not, but as it is thought either to flee the realm or to abide there some foreign power, intending by such ungodly means and ways to disturb the commune quiet of this realm and to resist such ordinances and decrees as the King’s majesty hath set forth and established for the succession of the imperial crown.
Local officials were exhorted tobe ready upon an hour’s warning with your said power to repair unto us and to stand fast with such ordinances as be subscribed unto us by his Majesty, signed with his own hand and sealed with the great seal of England, the which we shall cause to be imparted unto you with as convenient speed as we may … in the mean time we require and pray you to take such good orders for the maintenance of the continual watches in every place within that shire as no stir or uproar be attempted but that the doers thereof be by your industries stayed …10
The problem wit
h this hastily conceived missive is that it begged more questions than it answered. Why had Mary bolted? The inference was that she had been cut out of the succession, but, if so, why? Her religion was alluded to, as was the spectre of foreign involvement, without any specifics being given. And what about her sister Elizabeth, a follower of the new religion, who was nowhere mentioned? The letter also seemed to assume that there would be trouble, with its references to ‘stir’ and ‘uproar’, and it claimed a legitimacy for the Letters Patent that was false; they had never passed the Great Seal. It does not seem to have caused great alarm at local level, but neither did it inspire outpourings of loyal devotion. The privy council had signalled to the shires that all was not well at the seat of government and, outside East Anglia and the Thames Valley, most counties waited on events.
The council’s primary concern at this point was that Mary would try to flee the country altogether, using one of the east coast ports close to her own lands. Past experience, as much as wishful thinking, could have influenced this interpretation. She had considered flight before, when she was in less obvious personal danger. Still, it would be better to apprehend her rather than have her slip out of England, and Robert Dudley, Elizabeth’s future favourite and one of Northumberland’s many sons, was dispatched with a force to try to intercept the fugitive. He failed and Mary remained at large.
The council were at dinner on 10 July when Thomas Hungate, Mary’s messenger, delivered her letters demanding their allegiance. Hungate was promptly ‘lodged’ in the Tower for daring to carry such a subversive message. He had, though, succeeded in ruining the meal. There were mutterings of concern around the table and the duchesses of Northumberland and Suffolk broke down in tears, as well they might, since they were as ambitious as their menfolk. Neither had wasted any emotion on Mary’s feelings or the justification for denying the princess and her sister their birthright. Personal loyalties between women were as fragile as they were among men in these times of intrigue.
At first, the council held firm.The next day, they sent an uncompromising rebuke. It stated categorically that Jane was queen of England by Letters Patent endorsed by the realm’s leading nobles. Mary was nothing but a bastard who could not inherit the throne. At the same time, Jane was being proclaimed all over England, in a coordinated campaign in every county. Instructions were also given to Sir Philip Hoby, the ambassador in Brussels, to inform Charles V that Jane’s accession was a fait accompli and that Mary stood no chance of success.11 It sounded good, but the anxiety remained, and with good reason. Family frictions were soon the least of Queen Jane’s problems. By 13 July it was evident that a full-scale rebellion in support of Mary Tudor had broken out in eastern England.Weeping duchesses or no, Northumberland knew that she was not going to go away. He could not avoid resorting to arms.
When Mary arrived safely at Kenninghall, the first part of her plan had succeeded. Having managed to evade capture, she could now move forward into the positive phase of her strategy. Kenninghall was a good choice for the headquarters of a war council, accessible to her supporters but not too close to the towns of East Anglia, whose fealty was much less certain than that of the Catholic gentlemen of the countryside.The house had once been the showpiece of the Howard family’s wealth, its 72 rooms stuffed with tapestries and elegant furnishings. There was an irony in Mary basing herself in the former home of the man who had so often, and so brutally, tried to get her to submit to her father. But now Norfolk was an old and ailing prisoner in the Tower, musing on the untimely death of his brilliant but irresponsible son, the earl of Surrey, the final victim of HenryVIII’s many judicial murders. He who was once the highest peer in the land had little enough left when the inventory of his home was made in 1547. The house must have looked bereft when Mary first visited it in the summer of 1547.
Mary was a wealthy woman by then, and though she could have afforded to raise it back to the sumptuousness of its glory days, there is no evidence that she spent much money on it, or a great deal of time there. Her preference in Edward’s reign was for her Essex homes. Someone who suffered such regular ill health would not have found north Norfolk, where the winds blow in from the North Sea, an attractive destination, especially in winter. But the fact that the house was not cluttered with prized possessions made it ideal for Mary’s purposes in the summer of 1553. An infrequent visitor she may have been, but her household advisers, with their strong local links, had been careful to maintain their contacts and boost their lady’s image with the country gentlemen who formed her affinity.There was much genuine affection for Mary, and this goodwill was a powerful weapon when effectively exploited.
The second phase of the plan to put Mary on the throne swung into action even before she established herself at Kenninghall. On 8 July she summoned the heads of three leading East Anglian families, Sir George Somerset, Sir William Waldegrave and Clement Heigham, to join her cause. Waldegrave and Heigham were with her when she arrived at Kenninghall, and they had been joined by others - Sir John Mordaunt, husband of one of her long-serving gentlewomen, Sir William Drury, John Sulyard and the earl of Bath, at that stage the highest-ranked supporter of her claim. It was far from being an impressive host, but it was a start.
From Kenninghall, Mary sent out prepared letters to the knights and gentry of Norfolk and Suffolk, calling them to her side. Her communications strategy was considered and effective. One of its essential components was the spoken as well as the written word.Well-briefed local men were sent out to persuade and inspire by verbal means, enabling them to reach not just the landowners but their tenants and household staff as well. 12 These personal appeals had a powerful impact. But her concentration was not solely fixed on East Anglia, since her advisers knew that they must mobilise in the Thames Valley as well. So Sir Edward Hastings was also ordered to deliver support in Middlesex and Buckinghamshire, and his obedience galvanised other partisans of Mary in the neighbouring counties of Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire.This westward expansion of the rising was to prove a major element of its success.
She wrote, her network of messengers spoke on her behalf, and she was answered. Over the next five days the loyal knights and gentlemen of eastern England, primed by Mary’s personal staff, came with their own followings and their arms, pledged to uphold her cause. Their names were a roll-call of the leading families of the region: the Rochesters, the Jerninghams, the Waldegraves, the Whartons, the Bedingfelds, the Sheltons, the Southwells, the Poleys, the Nevilles, the Huddlestons and Henry Radcliffe, son of the earl of Sussex. As the contemporary account of Robert Wingfield records, ‘every day … the countryfolk of the two counties flocked to the support of their rightful queen’. Mary rewarded 125 of these men with annuities. Of the high nobility of England, there was not one single representative.
The men who stood for Mary were, of course, risking a great deal. Revolts in the English provinces were nothing new but few succeeded. The great northern rebellion of 1536, the Pilgrimage of Grace, was the result of a similar groundswell of discontent at religious change and Mary’s exclusion from the succession. Its leaders were given fair words and then ruthlessly extinguished. In East Anglia itself, Northumberland had demonstrated only four years earlier the kind of mercy rebels could expect. Mary’s supporters had not forgotten, but still they were willing to rally to her call. Their determination to stand up to the centre, to combat the politicians in London who cared nothing for local interests, is demonstrated by the scale of their response. The Edwardian government’s attempt to legislate out of existence their long-held beliefs was a source of underlying resentment. It has been said that legitimacy was not a major issue in influencing support for Mary, but for her supporters it was inextricably linked with her Catholicism. To them, she was the unquestioned heir. So this woman, who was a rank outsider at the beginning of July, a disinherited princess whose opposition figured so low on the scale of considerations in London that those in power had overlooked the need to arrest her, held firm as her bid for
the throne entered its crucial phase.
By 12 July, she had sufficient momentum and a large enough force to move her headquarters to Framlingham in Suffolk, a moated castle more easily fortified than Kenninghall.There, in the deer park below the castle, more local worthies awaited her. But her success was not yet assured, despite the defection to her cause of the earl of Sussex and Sir Thomas Cornwallis. No Protestant family had offered its support and the urban areas of East Anglia were either opposed, in the case of King’s Lynn, or divided, as in Ipswich, where both Mary and Jane were proclaimed on the same day. Nor was the countryside unanimous in its support for Mary.The marshland areas of East Anglia had suffered terribly the effects of spiralling prices and drought. They did not welcome quartermasters from Mary’s forces looking to relieve them of what few victuals they had.
And there were ominous signs of the violence that might lie ahead. Robert Dudley had a small but effective military force in the area which was keeping up resistance and threatening those known to support Mary. As he awaited reinforcements from London, he did not back down. A slightly larger force could have transformed his chances.
Throughout all this time, Mary showed remarkable courage and commitment. The miserable, indecisive princess who could not quite bring herself to cut her ties with England in 1550 was nowhere to be seen. Instead, she had rediscovered the implacable girl who resisted, for three years, a king’s determination to make her deny who she was.This was the supreme struggle of her turbulent life. But it had a clear goal, a prize worth fighting for, and it was evident that there were many who were willing to die for her. The knowledge galvanised her as never before. She already saw the hand of God at work and she responded. Mary was no passive observer of events, and the idea that she knew very little about the planning behind her fight for the throne underrates her intelligence and diligence. Mary was not the sort of woman who sat in the background where matters of such importance were concerned. Her direct, very personal involvement is stamped all over the summer of 1553. By 14 July, she had won over Lord Wentworth, who arrived ‘clad in splendid armour and accompanied by a not inconsiderable military force’ to join her troops. But, at the same time, two other developments immensely strengthened Mary’s prospects.The fleet at Great Yarmouth, which Northumberland was counting on to prevent her escape to the Continent, had mutinied, probably with the encouragement of Henry Jerningham, who was very influential in the town. And the duke himself had left London with two thousand men and a substantial amount of artillery, intending to engage her forces. He expected more to arrive when he reached Newmarket, but he was to be disappointed. Once he had gone, the council began to fall apart.