Mary Tudor: The First Queen

by Linda Porter

  Machyn was a devout Catholic with great reverence for Tudor monarchy. The thing he seems to have appreciated most about Mary’s religious policy is the way that it included him and other citizens in communal activities which allowed them to demonstrate their devotion to their sovereign. He loved the religious celebrations and processions, which embraced everyone. There were about sixty of these in Mary’s reign, though they petered out in the last year of her rule, perhaps because of the widespread outbreak of viral illness that year.

  The use of ritual and spectacle allowed Mary to establish a bond between herself and her subjects which was a strong force for unity of purpose. Although Mary was not really comfortable with public appearances, she realised that the message she wished to get across would be strengthened by her personal participation in some of these ceremonies. Machyn records that for Rogation Week in the spring of 1554 (before her marriage), when the court was at St James’s Palace,‘the queen’s grace went in procession … with heralds and serjeants of arms and four bishops’.The procession went round the queen’s chapel and moved on the next day to St Giles, ‘and there sung mass … and the next day, Tuesday, to Saint Martin’s in the Fields … and the third day to Westminster, and there a sermon and then mass and made good cheer and after about the park and so to St James court there’.20 Earlier in the same year, Mary used public spectacle to reinforce her victory over Wyatt’s rebels and to ensure that the people saw their ritual humiliation when they were released: ‘… all the Kent men went to the court with halters about their necks and bound with cords two and two together through London to Westminster … and the poor prisoners knelt down in the mire and the queen’s grace looked out over the gate and gave them all pardon and they cried out God save the queen’.21

  No doubt the men of Kent did not enjoy this treatment, but it reminded the onlookers of the queen’s power and majesty, as well as her capacity to forgive political opponents. Machyn also recorded the celebrations surrounding Mary’s supposed quickening with child in November 1554 and the enraptured response to rumours of her delivery the following spring.The disappointment of her false pregnancy he does not mention, but the joyful reaction to the victory of Philip’s combined Anglo-Imperial force against the French after the battle of St Quentin in 1557 is chronicled. The Te Deum was sung in all the parishes, bells rung, bonfires lit, and there was much drinking in the streets.This hardly suggests a virulent hatred of the queen and her Spanish husband, even if the response was encouraged by the authorities.

  The views of ordinary people on Mary’s religious programme and their judgements on the queen herself at the time have seldom been scrutinised. It is not easy to do so, given the vociferousness of her opponents and the general silence of the majority.Yet Machyn’s account indicates that she did touch a chord. Respect for monarchy and the rule of law was deeply embedded in Mary’s subjects, both great and small. It is impossible to say whether Mary consciously applied what today would be called a communications strategy or not. But her approach reflected not just her own priorities, which had nothing to do with doctrinal niceties, but also her own experiences. She had seen for herself how the faithful yearned for the mass during her brother’s time, when her house was a magnet for those who opposed the Edwardian religious legislation. She also knew the political power of symbolism when she entered London in March 1551 with all her retinue provocatively wearing rosaries. And she was keen to maintain the mysterious practice of touching victims of scrofula, the skin disease known as ‘the king’s evil’, which emphasised the sovereign’s mysterious and divine powers of healing. Queen Mary’s Manual for the blessing of cramp rings and touching for the evil, beautifully illuminated, is one of the loveliest artefacts to survive from her reign.22

  Machyn approved of his queen, but he had acquiesced quietly in the changes of her brother’s reign and adapted readily under Elizabeth. He was a devout man, but no extremist. Already in his fifties when Mary came to the throne, he had seen most of his children die before him, but he did not question the ways of God, any more than Mary did. He himself seems to have been a victim of the plague when he died in 1563, the same year that John Foxe published the first edition of his Acts and Monuments.

  Machyn’s picture of the public face of Catholic culture during Mary’s reign tells only one part of the story of the Marian Church. Its agenda was not to turn the clock back, but to adapt the best of reforming Catholicism to the situation of England. Pole and Mary’s bishops recognised the need for education, and they shared the queen’s belief in the benefits that would come from good preaching. Instructing the young would be key. As bishop of London, Bonner produced ‘An honest godlye instruction and information for the … bringinge up of Children’. It was intended for use by all the schoolmasters in the diocese who had responsibility for the first instruction of children. ‘All the youth’, according to Bonner, ‘must have some honest introduction and entry in things convenient for them to learn, that is to say, both to know the letters, with joining of them together, and thereby the sooner made apt to go further, both in reading and also in writing.’ And they should also learn how to bless themselves morning and evening and ‘to say also the Paternoster, the Ave Maria, the Creed, the Confiteor [the confession], with the rest to answer the priest at mass, to say grace at dinner and supper’. In his little book was printed the alphabet, in both lower and upper case, and the main prayers and devotions the child must learn. These were given in both English and Latin, and the English versions of the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed are almost word for word the same as in the 1552 Book of Common Prayer.23 Marian Catholicism did not seek to obliterate the changes under EdwardVI. Rather, it used what was thought acceptable and proper to underpin its own messages.

  One of the difficulties was how to get these messages across. It was one thing for Mary to demand a step-change in the quality and output of pulpit utterances, another to bring it about. And the written word would also be needed to overcome the onslaught of material from the exiles in Europe. Pole was well aware of the power of preaching and of books, though also wary of them as tools in the hands of Protestants. The misuse of the spoken word to seduce the gullible troubled him, as did exposure to unguided reliance on the scriptures. Here were all sorts of pitfalls, whatever the merits of the underlying intention:‘The which only desire of itself being good, yet not taking the right way to the accomplishing of the same, maketh many to fall into heresies, thinking no better nor speedier way … for to come to the knowledge of God and his law, than by reading of books, wherein they be sore deceived. And yet, so it be done in his place, and with right order and circumstance, it helpeth much.’24 He was not hostile to the idea of giving preaching and Bible study a prominence they never enjoyed in the earlier part of the Tudor century, so long as there was no indiscriminate recourse to them. What was sorely needed was appropriate material. It was easier to produce primers for the laity in fairly short order than it was to produce guidance to the priesthood on the topics that were to be encouraged for sermons.

  Here, the diligent Bonner was of help again. In 1555, a very busy year for him, he produced a book called A profitable and necessary doctrine, with certain homilies adjoined. It drew on the King’s Book of the 1540s, a stalwart of the last years of Henry VIII, and, much more remarkably, on Cranmer’s homilies, to provide an invaluable source for propounding the major elements of Christian belief. Lively and full of useful examples for the clergy to draw upon, the Profitable and necessary doctrine was the work of an able and active mind. It showed that there was nothing sterile about the direction of the Marian Church. At the beginning of 1558,Thomas Watson, the bishop of Lincoln, published a further contribution, in a series of 30 sermons, which could be used directly by priests too busy (or ill educated) to prepare their own. This ‘wholesome Catholic doctrine concerning the seven sacraments of Christ’s church’ was described as ‘expedient to be known of all men, set forth in manner of short sermons to be made to the people’.25

  So the
Catholic hierarchy and its printers took very much to heart the queen’s exhortations to support better preaching and counter Protestant literature. But this was only part of the drive necessary to make Catholicism healthy. The universities, particularly Cambridge, were purged of suspect academics, after visitations carried out on the orders of Cardinal Pole. Many scholars who supported new religious ideas fled abroad, as the authorities began to reintroduce the ideas of Christian humanism that had been flourishing on the Continent for years. Both institutions received the support of new benefactors. St John’s College, Oxford, was established in 1555 by Sir Thomas White, a former Lord Mayor of London, and in 1557, Dr John Caius refounded Gonville Hall, Cambridge, as Gonville and Caius College.

  Another, very visible beneficiary of the positive religious changes under Mary was Westminster Abbey, refounded as a Benedictine house in 1555 and restored to its independence outside the diocese of London. The shrine of Edward the Confessor, so central to the identity of English monarchy, had escaped the worst depredations of HenryVIII and his son, but it needed attention. Its present form we owe to the man who was to be the last abbot of Westminster, John Feckenham, Mary’s own confessor when she first ascended the throne.

  Westminster Abbey may have been something of a showpiece but Mary and Pole knew that real progress needed to be made at parish level. Here the amount of work to be done was daunting. The state of the churches themselves was often pitiful and it could not suddenly be rectified. EdwardVI had reigned for only six years, but the removal of the trappings of the old religion had been comprehensive.Their loss was by no means welcome.The images that were taken away had literally been part of the fabric of church life for hundreds of years.They were familiar to parishioners and were a source of local pride, as well as local employment. Ironically, the beginning of the 16th century had seen an upsurge in work on churches and their decorations, the money for all of this coming from individual bequests and donations. Half a century later, the results were ruthlessly despoiled. The Edwardian religious leaders would have none of this dangerously misleading frippery.They considered images of jewel-bedecked saints, the gleam of chalice and cup, the splendour of the priest’s vestments, the depiction of saints on the rood-screen that separated the nave from the altar, as idolatrous and divisive. These trappings hindered religious devotion and distracted the faithful from the simple beauty of God’s word.The commissioners who visited churches in the early 1550s were under instructions to leave behind only the bare essentials: a cup, a bell, a covering for the table and a surplice for the priest.

  Mary’s bishops were realistic enough to appreciate the extent of the problem they faced. It would not be easy to reinvigorate Catholic worship while the churches remained bare. Their austerity was uninspiring, but, while it had been swiftly achieved, it could not so quickly be reinstated. Many of the items confiscated remained in private hands, and though some were recovered, most of the plate taken from churches was not. Nevertheless, by the end of 1554 Mary could take some satisfaction in the progress that had been made, which provided a basis for moving forward. High altars were rebuilt and vestments and copes for the clergy provided.This was a sound start, and many parishes set about the task of building side altars and providing themselves with the many other accoutrements of Catholicism as best they could. But the various books describing the different services, the altar cloths for different seasons, the decoration of the rood-screen and the acquisition of religious ornaments all came more slowly. Bequests were encouraged, but in Marian England, with its growing problems of poverty and want, the faithful were often more concerned to provide for the living, in alms and charity, than to make generous provision for the local church on their deathbeds.When Archdeacon Nicholas Harpsfield conducted his visitation of Kent in 1557, he found that neglect of the churches was still considerable. At Goudhurst, for example, he was met by a sorry sight. There was no register book for births, marriages and deaths and no fair record of the church’s accounts; the glass windows of the church and the vicarage house both needed repair; the churchyard was overgrown. He also noted that ‘the window in the belfry be glassed before Midsummer, and to be closed otherwise decently (so that no pigeons may come into the church) before All Saints’.26 It is a picture of general neglect, a lapse of standards and, perhaps more profoundly, of a malaise brought about by the conflicting demands of mid-Tudor religious legislation. Most parishes did their best. They were not ill intentioned, only wearied by the demands of government.

  Whatever might have been desired in terms of decoration, repair and observance, the Marian Church did not want to restore medieval Catholicism to England. Reviving the mass was central to its programme, as it was to the daily life of Queen Mary herself. Despite the fact that it was a profoundly personal experience, appreciated in varying ways by people of differing social classes and education, the mass was a focus for social cohesion and national unity. It mattered much more to the average Englishman than the distant authority of the pope. Progress was being made on what the queen viewed as spiritual reconstruction for England, and it seems that she had much of the country on her side. The lurid woodcuts of Protestant victims in Foxe’s publications are only part of the story of the religious experience under Mary.

  In other areas, too, Mary’s reign saw achievements that have long gone unacknowledged. Hers was a cultured court, with a strong emphasis on music and drama. Thomas Tallis, one of the greatest of English 16th—century composers, was a Gentleman of Mary’s Chapel Royal, as he had been in the reigns of HenryVIII and EdwardVI. As a lay singer, she would have heard his voice often. His works from this period cannot be dated with accuracy, but he may have written his great seven-part mass, Puer natus est nobis, in 1554 as a celebration of Mary’s supposed pregnancy.

  John Heywood, who had so charmingly celebrated the beauty of the young Princess Mary 20 years earlier, thrived while she was queen. He wrote a ballad to celebrate her marriage to Philip,‘The eagle’s bird hath spread his wings’, and his allegorical poem, The Spider and the Flie, was completed and published in 1556. The year before, the queen had awarded him a pension of £50 per annum.There were also two editions of his ongoing magnum opus on English proverbs and epigrams, in 1555 and 1556. It eventually ran to over 1,260 entries.

  Mary was fond of masques and plays, as she reminded the Master of the Revels in December 1554. Requiring him to provide the costumes and props for a play by Nicholas Udall, she noted: ‘Whereas our well-beloved Nicholas Udall hath at sundry seasons convenient … shewed and mindeth thereafter to show his diligence in setting forth of dialogues and interludes before us for our regal disport and recreation’.27 Udall and Heywood were not the only people who wrote for her. Baldwyn’s play, Love and Life, was ‘set down’ on Christmas Eve, 1556.This was described as a comedy, but its touch was very heavy. All the characters had names beginning with the letter ‘L’. They included Leonard Lustyguts, an epicure, and Sir Lewis Lewdlife, a chaplain. Whether Mary would have been amused by this reference to the continued failings of the clergy is a moot point. She did, though, like to enjoy herself and be entertained. Apparently she could even hold her own in the cut and thrust of witty exchanges with John Heywood.

  Mary’s love of music and drama was an essential part of her character. These interests provided an important outlet for relaxation. They were a necessary antidote for the sheer grind of government, and though the court was quieter when Philip was not there, Mary did not go completely into her shell. Once she had recovered from the trauma of her phantom pregnancy, the queen accepted that there was much still to be done if she was to improve the state of her country. With Philip gone, she must assume full responsibility and work with her advisers to encourage commerce, improve fiscal management and tackle the question of social and municipal reform. A number of the improvements she set in motion were developed by the Elizabethan government. But her sister never acknowledged the debt she owed to Mary.

  Helping commerce to thrive was a priority. Initially,
relations with the queen’s overseas merchants were prickly and rather contradictory. The stranglehold of the Hanseatic merchants of northern Europe and their privileged position in England was deeply unpopular with their English competitors in European trade, the Merchant Adventurers. The Hanse paid only 1 per cent duty on its merchandise and had complete control of prices. Mary’s first parliament passed a bill of tonnage and poundage requiring them to pay the same duties as other merchants, but the quid pro quo was a lifting of the ban on Hanseatic purchases of cloth in England.This may have been partly the result of imperial pressure but it also reflected the uncomfortable truth that the merchants of the Hanse had provided loans to the English monarchy for a long time. The Merchant Adventurers were furious and by 1555 Mary and the government were rethinking their Hanseatic strategy. Two years later the ban was reimposed and the Hanse’s charter revoked.

  Tensions in traditional markets encouraged the search for new ones. The great age of exploration is associated with Elizabeth, but Mary had her own adventurers. When it became clear that there would be no immediate opening of South America to English merchants, whatever hopes may have been raised by the marriage to Philip of Spain, attention turned east.The first expedition looking for a north-eastern passage to the wealth of the Orient set out as Edward VI lay dying, in June 1553. It was led by Sir Hugh Willoughby and consisted of three ships.The little fleet was scattered by a violent storm off Norway, and though Willoughby eventually reached the Russian coast, he was to die there, trapped by the extreme cold of the winter.