Mary Tudor: The First Queen

by Linda Porter

  So it was basically prejudice which damaged Simon Renard. What was to be expected, Ruy Gomez was saying, from someone like him? He was not one of them, and neither, for that matter, was Arras. The French-speakers who served Charles V so ably were looked down on by Philip and his staff. And there was probably also a psychological dimension to their reservations. Philip had to face the fact that Renard knew Mary better than he did, and was fully aware of the limitations on his power in England.Who better, since Renard had helped enshrine them in the terms of the treaty? There was truth in the assertion that the ambassador was a schemer, but so were all 16th—century diplomats. It was part of the job. Paget would have fallen out with Mary without Renard’s encouragement, but Philip did not know this.The one thing that he and the ambassador did agree on, however, was the state of religion in England. Although many Protestants had left in self-imposed exile, it was feared that some were returning.While England remained in schism, the benefits of Mary’s accession were in doubt. Philip himself had expressed doubts that his English servants were good Catholics. The queen’s religious programme had stalled and she very much wanted it taken forward, now that her marriage was concluded.The breach with Rome must be healed and Philip, the titular king of England, seemed ideally placed to handle the delicate manoeuvring required to reach a satisfactory outcome for both sides. It was to be one of the most significant achievements of his time as Mary’s husband.

  Aware that the major stumbling block was always going to be the question of the return of Church lands, Philip concentrated on working with the privy council to ensure that their fears were addressed. The English ruling class was perfectly happy to hear mass but they would not contemplate giving up their wealth. The queen had tried leading by example, waiving Crown revenues from some former Church lands, but all she did was cause alarm and inflict some damage on her own finances. Philip knew that this approach would not gain the result Mary desired, which was to rid herself of the supremacy as established by her father and gain papal absolution for England’s 20 years of religious disobedience.

  By November 1554, he had made good progress with his task. Despite his reservations about the imperial ambassador, he sent Renard off to Brussels to gain the agreement of Cardinal Pole, still stranded at the emperor’s court, and set about gaining the confidence of the privy council in England. Distribution of pensions from his own funds probably helped this process, but there was also general support, once it was clear that the Cromwellian redistribution of Church property would remain untouched. Satisfied at last, the council finally issued, on 3 November, an invitation to the long-absent Pole to return to his native land. Mary’s third parliament, summoned for 12 November, reversed the act of attainder against Pole and prepared to draft the bill for reunification with Rome.

  Paget and Sir Edward Hastings were sent to escort the cardinal from Brussels but he set out before they arrived, meeting them at Ghent on 16 November. His eagerness is understandable, since as recently as late September he had written to Philip indirectly accusing the emperor of obstructing his return.‘A year has passed’, he complained,‘since I began to knock at the door of this royal house, and none has opened unto me.’35 He had suffered banishment and 20 years of exile to ensure that Mary would not be barred from the throne. As crowds came to see him on his journey from Dover to London, he knew that the prolonged ordeal was over. The archbishopric of Canterbury, the prize he always dreamed of, would now be his.

  Still, it was thought prudent for him to arrive in London quietly, by river, rather than make a great entry. He came in the royal barge from Gravesend, landing at Whitehall steps on 22 November. Here Philip was waiting to take him to the queen, his kinswoman. Pole had not seen her since she was a young princess in full bloom. It was an emotional moment, as Mary ‘made a deep reverence to the king and cardinal, who were walking side by side’. Pole knelt and Mary raised him up. She and her husband, it was reported, ‘received him with great signs of respect and affection; both shed tears’.36 Then the three of them went together into the queen’s presence chamber, where they spent half an hour talking in English and Italian.

  Just over a week later Parliament was summoned to court to hear Pole give assurances, in the presence of the king and queen, that ‘my commission is not of prejudice to any person. I come not to destroy but to build. I come to reconcile, not to condemn. I come not to compel, but to call again.’ On the last day of November, he pronounced the words Mary had longed to hear, absolving her country of its years of sin and schism: ‘Our Lord Jesus Christ, which with his precious blood has redeemed us, and purified all our sins and pollutions, in order to make himself a glorious bride without stains and without wrinkle, whom the Father made chief over the church, he through his mercy absolves you.’37 Pole was a considerable orator and his words made a great impression on those who heard them. And Mary at last could be confident that the sins of her father and brother were wiped clean. She wrote to Charles V to inform him of the return of her people to ‘the obedience of the Holy Church and the Catholic faith’, an outcome due in large part to her husband. And though this was a very solemn moment, she wanted to mark it with rejoicing as well as prayer. Renard reported that ‘the queen gave a banquet to the king and his gentlemen, and after supper there were dancing and masks.The king had that day shown liberality to the ladies of the court, who were dressed in the gowns he had given them.’38

  But points of difference about Church property remained, and the bill to restore England to Roman jurisdiction was not passed by Parliament until 3 January 1555, after some very hard talking. Philip found it necessary to speak to Pole himself, and Mary also joined a meeting with the privy council and lawyers just before Christmas when, provoked by references to statutes in her brother’s reign, she threatened to abdicate if her subjects decided to use the example of the Edwardian regime as guidance.

  She had, though, played little direct part in the orchestration of the return to Rome, preferring, as she acknowledged to the emperor, to leave its management to Philip. As she never shirked responsibility, her reasons for following this course can only be conjectured. Although it meant a great deal to her personally, there were elements that may have embarrassed her. She loathed the supreme headship, with its unhappy associations of the persecution she had suffered in the 1530s, but she seems to have wanted someone else to rid her of it. Perhaps she also felt that matters of Church government were, as Pole himself had so bluntly told her, best left to men. Then there was also the international dimension of dealing with the papacy, which Philip’s Habsburg connections made him well equipped to handle. But there was probably also another, much more immediate and personal reason which explains why the queen was content to let her husband handle the delicate papal relationship. Mary believed that she was pregnant.

  It was on 18 September, barely two months after the wedding, that Simon Renard first reported the news that everyone at the imperial court - and the majority of Englishmen - wanted to hear. ‘One of the queen’s physicians has told me that she is probably with child.’ Never one to miss an opportunity, the ambassador made sure that this piece of information was spread around. He was sure that the news, if true, would prove the panacea for all the ills with which England was still afflicted. It would silence malcontents in an outpouring of national joy, negate any threat posed by Elizabeth and dampen anti-Spanish sentiment.The next day his information was confirmed by Count Stroppiana, the duke of Savoy’s envoy to the emperor, who was visiting London. The count added an interesting piece of information based on his own observation; he had seen Mary being sick. Greatly heartened by the rumours coming from England, Charles V wrote to his son that he hoped the news of the queen’s pregnancy would be confirmed. And very soon it was. Ruy Gomez reported on 2 October that it was now definite that Mary was expecting a child. It ‘will put a stop to every difficulty’, he wrote.39

  Mary herself was overcome with joy. Her doctors and her delighted attendants concurred with what she herself wanted
so much to believe. The boundless extent of God’s benevolence towards her was something in which she now had absolute faith. The Almighty had given her a husband so much more wonderful than she had any right to expect, and it was perfectly natural that this blessing would be followed by the miracle of conception.

  There was no public rejoicing at the news until, as was customary, the queen believed she had felt the child move. This came at the end of November, coinciding with the emotion of Reginald Pole’s return.The privy council instructed Edmund Bonner, bishop of London, that the time had come for official acknowledgement of Mary’s condition: ‘Whereas it hath pleased Almighty God … to extend his Benediction upon the Queen’s Majesty in such sort as she is conceived and quick with child, [we] … do pray and require you … give order that thanks may be openly given by singing of the Te Deum in all the churches in your diocese.’40 Dr Weston, the dean of Westminster and Mary’s chaplain, composed a prayer for the queen which, in its sombre tone, is highly revealing of the Church’s attitude to women and childbirth:Oh most righteous Lord God, which for the offence of the first woman, hath threatened unto all women a common, sharp and inevitable malediction; and hath enjoined them that they should conceive in sin, and being conceived, should be subject to many and grievous torments, and finally be delivered with the danger and jeopardy of their lives; we beseech thee for thine extending great goodness and bottomless mercy, to mitigate the strictness of that law; assuage thine anger for a while and cherish … our most gracious Queen Mary … so help her that in due season [she may] bring forth a child, in body beautiful and comely, in mind noble and valiant …41

  As a woman of her time, Mary would not have been surprised by this reminder of her sex’s sinfulness and the dangers of childbirth. Her mood, however, remained resolute and positive. Just before Christmas, she wrote to Charles V, in a rare reference to her condition: ‘As for that which I carry in my belly, I declare it to be alive and with great humility thank God for His great goodness shown to me’. She had suffered morning sickness, her belly was growing, and she had felt the child move. Her medical advisers were monitoring her; Susan Clarencius and all (save one) of her women assured her she was expecting a child. Everybody, including Philip, wanted to believe it. She was absolutely convinced and no one around her wanted to cause her pain - or risk her anger - by suggesting otherwise. She must be pregnant. It was God’s will.

  Mary passionately wanted a child and her reasons were dynastic as much as personal.The birth of an heir would resolve all doubts over the succession and help her attain her vision of England’s role in Europe. Elizabeth, Courtenay, even Mary Queen of Scots and other, more distant claimants would not matter any more. As a monarch, Mary needed security as much as she may have welcomed maternity.There is no evidence that she had always longed for a baby, or that she was more sentimental about motherhood than other 16th—century women of high birth. She had numerous godchildren, but that went with her rank. She may certainly have enjoyed this role, but it proves nothing about her own maternal inclinations. The only baby she had known at close quarters was Elizabeth, whose household she so unwillingly shared for three years. That period had been the nadir of her existence. As a queen she would not have understood modern concepts like bonding between a newborn and its mother. The same sort of household that had looked after her as a baby princess would take care of all the needs of her child. There would be a wet-nurse, rockers to soothe the child in its splendid cradle, laundresses and attendants. Mary was an affectionate person and she expected to love her baby dearly. But it would not get in the way of her being a queen.

  In general, Mary’s health seemed good, even better than before. She filled out and observers noted that her stomach was growing. But there were those who, right from the outset, had their doubts. Could a woman of her age, with a history of poor health, really have conceived? What if it was not true? Certainly, the French and Mary’s Protestant opponents were quick to raise doubts and they maintained them throughout the winter. At the end of March, Renard reported to Charles V that seditious broadsheets were circulating in London claiming that the queen was not expecting a child and that there was a plot to pass off a substitute as her own.42

  Everyone watched with great interest as the period of her withdrawal from public life drew near.The delivery was expected some time in the early spring, and in mid-April, around Easter, Mary withdrew to Hampton Court for her lying-in. ‘The queen has withdrawn,’ the ambassador noted, ‘and no one else enters her apartments except the women who serve her.’ But Philip was already growing embarrassed, writing to his brother-in-law: ‘The queen’s pregnancy turns out not to have been as certain as we thought.Your highness and my sister manage it better than the queen and I do.’43 Whether he meant that the date or the pregnancy itself was uncertain is not clear. He could not have been much comforted when, on 30 April, London went wild as word circulated that the queen had been delivered of a son during the night.The Venetian ambassador reported that church bells were rung, bonfires lit and feasting began in the streets. But the rumour, though it reached as far as Brussels, was false.There was no bonny prince yet, and the authorities found it necessary to issue explicit denials. Whatever the queen might desire or her subjects want to hear, the birth was not imminent.

  Medical advisers then revised the due date. There had been some miscalculation, it was said, but the queen was definitely pregnant. They would not, in any case, have ventured to contradict a queen who was so steadfast in her belief. And the ladies of Mary’s household continued to tell their mistress exactly what she wanted to hear, with no apparent thought for their credibility or her own if, as some of them already knew, they were utterly wrong.

  By the end of May, it was not just the king who was concerned. Ruy Gomez made his own disquiet plain:I would have written to you as you asked me to do about the queen’s giving birth if I had seen in her any sign of heaviness. These last days she has been walking all about the garden on foot, and she steps so well that it seems to me that there is no hope at all for this month. I asked Dr Caligala what he thought about her highness’s condition, and when she would be delivered. He said it might happen any day now, for she had entered the month. But according to her count it would not be strange if the delivery were to be delayed until 6 June. 44

  At some point in May, letters were prepared announcing the queen’s safe delivery. They were, naturally, undated, and the sex of the child was left blank. Among the intended recipients was Henry II of France, whose ambassador had heard from paid sources that there was no possibility that Mary was pregnant - those around her were merely giving her false hope by saying that she had got the dates wrong.

  Although Mary had not been seen in public since moving to Hampton Court, she continued to conduct affairs of state. In early July, she gave audience to the Noailles brothers and roundly chastised them for the failure of the French to participate constructively in the abortive peace negotiations with the emperor. It thoroughly undermined her position as mediator, she complained.The two diplomats were dismayed by her ‘sour reply’: ‘She would never have thought that, as she had been asked to take a hand in this matter, she would be treated with so little deference. She had been a Christian and Catholic princess all her life and she had felt the inroads of the Turks in Christendom as if it had been her own kingdom, having deep compassion for the victims of this war.’45 Later in the month she wrote to Charles V and Mary of Hungary about trade in the Low Countries and told Sir John Mason, her ambassador to the imperial court, that he was to issue explicit denials that she was not with child.

  It was her last, weary gesture of belief. Everyone else knew the truth. Precisely when Mary herself acknowledged it is not known but the mere fact that she met Antoine and François de Noailles when the official line was still that she might give birth at any time is strongly indicative of an earlier acceptance of reality than has previously been thought. On 4 August she left Hampton Court for the nearby residence of Oatlands. Hampton Court its
elf was in dire need of cleaning and fast becoming unsanitary.Throughout the summer it had heaved with free-loading ladies hoping to do well from the birth.When she finally faced the truth, Mary could not wait to get away from it. Her state of mind can only be imagined, but the stress and disappointment had made her paler than ever. She was embittered and despairing, for she knew now that there was nothing to keep her husband in England. She had failed him and she had failed her country. Once more, the intentions of the God she worshipped so devoutly seemed inscrutable. In a lifetime of bitter blows, of loss and fear and uncertainty, there can have been no greater misery.

  It is impossible to say with any confidence what had actually happened to Mary. Given her history of menstrual problems and the general medical ignorance of the age, her belief that she was pregnant is perfectly understandable. She was an anointed queen and there would have been no question of an internal examination. Even to mention the possibility might have been regarded as treason. Phantom pregnancies are a recognised medical condition and they were not uncommon in Mary’s time. Lady Lisle, the wife of the governor of Calais, experienced one in the 1530s. She, too, had a cradle and baby clothes prepared and received many congratulatory letters. In June 1537 she took to her chamber, but, by August, her doubts were growing. Her devoted servant, John Husee, wrote before all hope was abandoned: ‘… your ladyship is not the first woman of honour that hath overshot or mistaken your time and reckoning … therefore, good madam, in the name of God, be not so faint-hearted, nor mistrust not yourself. For I assuredly hope that all is for the best; but I admit that it might chance otherwise (which God forbid), yet should not your ladyship take is so earnestly, but refer all unto God.’46 But Honor Lisle, like Mary Tudor, took it very earnestly indeed.