Tudor Queens of England

by David Loades

  35 Norfolk was executed for treason and Mary’s status as a security risk was greatly enhanced. At the same time, Mary’s prospects of an eventual return to Scotland were withering away. There had from the time of her fl ight been a residual party in her homeland committed to her restoration. When the Regent, the Earl of Moray, died in 1570, the Earl of Argyll and the Hamiltons briefl y made common cause for that purpose, but their alliance lasted less than a year before Argyll pulled out. The casualty rate among regents was high. The Earl of Lennox was killed in a skirmish in 1571 and his successor, the Earl of Mar, died in 1572. This left James Douglas, Earl of Morton in control, and Morton was strongly pro-English. The unsettled conditions produced by the rapid turn over of governors between 1570 and 1572 brought some of Mary’s supporters out into the open in what was a de facto rebellion. They seized Edinburgh Castle but that was the limit of their success and when the regent was able to call upon English artillery to bombard the castle in 1573, they were forced to surrender. In 1579 there was a brief fl utter of returning hope. James was now 13 and his personal preferences were beginning to matter. At that point his preference was for his French kinsman, Esme Stuart, who became Earl of Lennox in 1580 and Duke in 1581. Esme’s rise signalled the downfall of Regent Morton, who was overthrown in 1580 and executed in 1581. The English Council was briefl y exercised about the possibility of a revival of French infl uence in Scotland, and Mary became optimistic. However Henry III had no desire to destabilize his delicate relations with Elizabeth. The Guises began a new round of intrigues with Mary’s agents in France but before they could come to anything a group of Protestant lords seized control of the young King of Scots and arrested a number of Lennox supporters. The Duke himself fl ed to France and the last chance of there being a role for Mary in Scotland disappeared. The Earl of Shrewsbury was vigilant to prevent unauthorized access to Mary but he made no attempt to prevent her from communication with the outside 174

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  world and she conducted a series of restless and futile intrigues with her supporters, mainly in France but also to some extent in England. The Earl moved her around his residences for reasons of convenience and hygiene but she never went far from Sheffi eld, except for periodic visits to Buxton to take the waters. This was fashionable as well as therapeutic and she may well have conducted unauthorized discussions there. The Council feared that, but took no effective attempts to stop it. Meanwhile her constant attempts to earn by good conduct the ultimate prize of recognition as Elizabeth’s heir made no progress at all. Since the Ridolfi plot William Cecil (now Lord Burghley), the Queen’s senior adviser, was particularly strong in his opposition. The Anglo-French treaty of Blois (1572) held fi rm through the 1570s, and Mary at last realized that this cut off any chance of substantial aid from France – as distinct from a little surreptitious encouragement – so in 1580 she set out in a radically new direction. Through her agent in Paris, she offered to place herself, her realm and her son, under the protection of the King of

  Spain.36 At the same time she reaffi rmed her Catholicism and repaired her damaged fences in Rome. The cause of the catholic Church, both in England and in Scotland, was the cause of Spain. Philip himself was cautious and non-committal but his agent in England, Bernardino de Mendoza, was enthusiastic and a new round of intrigues began, not this time involving the succession but rather Elizabeth’s removal by a combination of a large-scale Catholic rising and substantial Spanish military support. As neither of these conditions was likely to be satisfi ed, all these plots have an air of unreality about them and how much Mary herself knew of them is uncertain. Whatever she knew, she was playing a double game because on the one hand she was writing to Elizabeth about the possibility of a condominium in Scotland, which, she argued, would secure French and Spanish recognition for James and, on the other hand, she had written to Philip in October 1581 proposing that James be sent to Spain while she returned to Scotland on the back of a Spanish army. By this time, it seems clear that her professions of friendship for Elizabeth were worthless and that her own grasp of political reality was wearing distinctly thin. At about the same time that Mary was writing to the King of Spain, the Duke of Guise was spinning another web of intrigue with the assistance of Mendoza. This time the foreign invasion was to be mounted by the Guise party with Spanish fi nancial backing and was heavily dependent upon the Catholic network in England, which a young man by the name of Francis Throgmorton claimed to be able to mobilize. The object was ostensibly to be Catholic toleration but in reality it was regime change. Mary knew of these intrigues and their real purpose but was not deeply involved. Philip appears to have known nothing about it. The threat was not serious. As Holinshed pointed out, ‘there wanted two things, money and

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  the assistance of a convenient party in England to join with the foreign forces.

  ’37 Throgmorton’s network was real enough but quite inadequate for his purpose. The main consequences of the plot, apart from the execution of Throgmorton, were the expulsion of Mendoza in 1584 and the convincing demonstration that had been given of the effectiveness of Walsingham’s ‘anti-terrorist’ system. There was insuffi cient evidence to proceed against Mary but suspicion of her intentions had been jacked up another notch. A less direct consequence was something of a panic about the succession, because the more of these plots there were, the more likely it was that one of them would eventually succeed. A Bond of Association was drawn up in 1584 and signed by over a thousand gentlemen, committing themselves never to accept anyone on the throne in whose name the present queen had been made away. Mary was not named but the target was obvious. Then in 1585 Parliament passed an Act ‘for … the surety of the Queen most Royal Person’, which not only gave legal status to the Bond of Association but laid down detailed procedures as to how the guilty parties were to be dealt with. It was under the terms of that statute that Mary was shortly to be tried.

  38 The Queen of Scots seemed to be quite incapable of learning from her own mistakes. She had got away with a marginal involvement in the Throgmorton plot, partly for lack of fi rm evidence but rather more because there was no obvious law under which she might be tried and no certainty that any court in England had jurisdiction over her. The statute of 1585 supplied both those defects but in spite of knowing that perfectly well and professing a desire to retire altogether from the political arena it was not long before she was up to her eyes in another plot. In January 1585 the Earl of Shrewsbury was relieved of his charge, and Mary was moved from Sheffi eld back to Tutbury, this time in the custody of Sir Amyas Paulet. Paulet was a puritan, and soon proved to be an exceptionally zealous guardian. In December of the same year he moved his charge to the nearby manor of Chartley and deliberately deceived her into believing that she had discovered a way to correspond that evaded his vigilanc

  e.39 Nothing could have been further from the truth, and the next time a plot was being hatched, Paulet and Walsingham made certain that she walked right into the trap. The scenario was familiar. Mendoza, the Guises and Mary’s French agents were plotting in Paris what was virtually a re-run of the Throgmorton conspiracy, only this time the English agent was a young man named Anthony Babington. Babington was a former servant of Mary’s, and appears to have been quite bowled over by her charms. He was also far more zealous than discreet and on 6 July 1586 wrote her a highly explicit letter, seeking her approval for another assassination attempt against Elizabeth. This letter fell into Walsingham’s hands and he read it before she did. Altogether this was a very leaky conspiracy because 176

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  another of the plotters, a priest named Ballard, was already in custody and had made damaging allegations, so Babington was a marked man. Then on 17 July the unsuspecting Mary replied to Babington, explicitly approving his scheme and giving him various advice as to how to set about the task. Walsingham, of course, read
the letter. He now had the evidence which he needed, but still faced the daunting task of persuading the Queen to act. However, circumstances had changed since 1584. England was now at war and Mary had exposed herself to the charge of being a Spanish agent; even Elizabeth could not ignore so blatant a threat. Had not William of Orange fallen to just such an assassin’s bullet two years earlier?

  This combination of pressures forced the Queen to act. In October 1586 she set up a commission to try her cousin and notifi ed her of the intention: Whereas we are given to understand that you, to our great and inestimable grief, as one void of all remorse of conscience, pretend with great protestations not to be in any sort privy or assenting to any attempt either against our state or person, forasmuch as we fi nd by most clear and evident proof that the contrary will be verifi ed and maintained against you …

  40 She had authorized the commissioners to proceed to trial. Mary did not attempt to challenge the jurisdiction of the court but instead adopted the futile expedient of protesting her innocence. However, even her own secretaries testifi ed against her. Elizabeth knew perfectly well that compassing the death of a heretic would incur no censure from the Catholic Church, but she still insisted on conferring with the commissioners before they delivered their verdict. On 4 December her guilt was proclaimed in accordance with the terms of the 1585 Act, and James was reassured that his mother’s exclusion from the English throne did not affect his ow

  n claim.41 As a result very largely of her own folly, all Mary’s schemes for the English Crown or succession, which had occupied her for quarter of a century, had now come to nothing and her life was on the line. Elizabeth, for reasons that are entirely creditable in humane terms, was most reluctant to see the woman who had professed to be her ‘most dear sister’ suffer on the scaffold. On the other hand, she was now convinced of Mary’s treachery and her councillors, aware of her reluctance, stirred rumours of new plots. At length she was convinced. ‘Aut fer, aut feri; ne feriare feri’ (suffer or strike; strike in order not to be stricken), she is alleged to have said, and signed the death warrant on 1 February 1587. Mary was executed on the morning of 8 February, making her exit with far more theatrical fl air and dignity than she had lived. Despite her dubious relations with the Church, she presented herself as a Catholic martyr and as such was accepted by subsequent Catholic historiography. She died at Fotheringhay, where she had

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  been tried, and was buried in nearby Peterborough Cathedral. James professed great sorrow and indignation but he did not allow either to disrupt his developing relationship with Elizabeth. After all, he had not seen his mother since he was a baby. What he did do years later in 1612, was to have her remains moved from Peterborough to Westminster Abbey – as though she had been Queen indeed. Mary was unique. She was Queen of Scotland effectively only from 1561 to 1567 and, after a good start, made a catastrophic mess of her responsibilities. Before 1561, although she bore the title, she was little more than a fi gurehead and after 1568 she was an exile and a prisoner. For the six years of her reign when she was in Scotland she was a serious political rival to Elizabeth but, after her marriage to Darnley, her position disintegrated. In fact she fell into the trap that Elizabeth narrowly avoided, of allowing her physical and emotional needs to take precedence over the political demands of her position. This worked both positively, in her marriage to Darnley, and negatively in her involvement in his murder. Despite her intelligence and shrewdness she behaved as a woman rather than as a queen. After 1568, if she had converted to Protestantism and had come to terms with the English Council, she might have been recognized as heir. On the other hand if she had been a different kind of woman she might have ended her days as Queen of Scotland and England would not have been troubled with her. Eventually she drifted into the position of being the Catholic pretender and

  – given the way in which English opinion was moving – particularly after 1570

  – that was a formula for failure. In the context of this study, she is an admirable foil for Elizabeth. Scotland’s misfortune was England’s gain.

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  7. Anne Boleyn by Unknown artist (National Portrait Gallery, London)

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  8. Jane Seymour by Hans Holbein the Younger

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  9. Catherine Parr by Unknown artist (National Portrait Gallery, London)

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  10. Unknown woman, formerly known as Catherine Howard after Hans Holbein the Younger (National Portrait Gallery, London)

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  11. Lady Jane Dudley (née Grey) by Unknown artist (National Portrait Gallery, London)

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  12. Mary Queen of Scots by Unknown artist

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  13. Queen Mary I by Hans Eworth (National Portrait Gallery, London)

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  14. Queen Elizabeth I attributed to George Gower (National Portrait Gallery, London)

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  The Married Sovereign: Queen Mary I In July 1553 Henry VIII’s earth-moving efforts to prevent a female succession were fi nally brought to nothing. When his only surviving son died without achieving his majority there was no man with a respectable claim in sight.

  1 Henry had provided against such an eventuality both in his last succession Act and in his will, decreeing that in the event of both himself and his son dying without further heirs the Crown was to pass to his elder daughter, Mary. It was, of course, hoped that this would not arise. As we have seen, Edward tried to divert the succession away from Mary but since his chosen candidate was also female and with an inferior claim the attempt made on his behalf after his death was unsuccessful. On 19 July Mary was proclaimed and, as her reign was offi cially dated from the time of Edward’s death, Jane was erased from the record. Mary, although passionately convinced of her right to succeed, was only too aware of the problems that she faced. As the Church taught, custom decreed, and everyone believed, women were naturally inferior to men and it was their destiny to be ruled and not to rule. In her youth, a girl was controlled by her father, or by some male surrogate; when she married, she passed under the authority of her husband and as a widow she was ‘protected’ by her sons. Of course many women did not fi t into these tidy categories. There were unmarried heiresses whose fathers had died; spinsters who were not heiresses; and widows without offspring. It was among such unattached women, as well as among those families where the number of daughters outran the parental capacity to provide dowries, that the religious houses had carried out their main recruitment. Mary, however, even at the time of her deepest affl iction, had been no more inclined than her mother to take the veil. Both were far too keenly aware of their royal credentials to wish to exchange them, even for the kingdom of heaven.

  Mary had enjoyed a happy childhood and had seen a great deal more of both her parents than was normal with royal offspring of the period. Her education was carefully planned in the Renaissance mode, with much emphasis upon biblical and classical reading but it had been a girl’s education, designed to make her a fi t companion for a great king and a mother to his children. It was not designed to make her a ruler of men. For Henry to have brought up his 188

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  daughter for that purpose would have been an admission of defeat that he was not prepared to countenance. Catherine needed to look no further for a model than her own upbringing, which had likewise been learned, and feminine. Juan Vives, to whom her mother had turned for advice, and who was an advocate of women’s education, designed his scheme for a girl’s supposedly inferior capacity and conscientiously steered clear of both lechery and politics.

  2 How much Mary knew of her parents’ marital problems while she was in Wales we do not know but it is reasonable to suppose that the Countess of Salisbury protected her against the salacious gossip that focused on Anne Boleyn before 1529. When she came back from the Marches in the latter ye
ar and walked into the storm she was already 13 and no longer a child by the standards of the time. She had been twice betrothed and twice abandoned but it is unlikely that these essentially political games had had much impact on her personally. The independent household that she had enjoyed in Wales continued and, although she spent quite a lot of time with her mother, the Countess of Salisbury continued in post, and Mary was, in theory at least, very much her own mistress. However, during the sensitive adolescent years between 13 and 16, she became a very partisan spectator of the ‘sex war’ going on between her father and her mother and when the whole situation exploded in 1533 she was very much in the fi ring line. When she furiously declined to be termed ‘The Lady Mary’ her whole establishment was closed down and she found herself under virtual arrest in the household set up for her supplanter, Elizabeth. Her formal education had in any case ceased by that time and she was left to draw what consolation she could from the piety and classical learning that she had absorbed Her mother’s death in January 1536 dealt her a severe blow and worse was to follow in May, when she discovered that the shameful ways in which she had been treated sprang not from the infl uence of Anne Boleyn but from her father’s own political and ecclesiastical convictions. Undermined by this discovery, she surrendered to his will in July 1536, and was immediately restored to favour becoming ‘the second lady of the court’ after Queen Jane Seymour.

  3 Over the next 11 years, as queens came and went, she ran her own household, living partly at court and partly in one or other of the royal residences in the Home Counties. Marriage proposals were mooted from time to time and she even met one of her suitors but despite her diminished offi cial status, her marriage was primarily a political issue over which she had (and could expect to have) very little control. She is said to have lamented at one point that as long as her father was alive she would never be wed, but would remain ‘only the Lady Mary, and the most unhappy lady in Christendom’.4 What Mary really thought, either about this or about anything else, during these years is extremely hard