Tudor Queens of England

by David Loades

  The copye of a letter … sent to the erles of Arundel, Derbie, Shrewsbury and Penbroke … in which he accused the nobles named of seeking to obtain the King’s crowning by force or fraud: If the crown were the Queen’s, in such sort that she might do with it what she would, both now and after her death, there might appear some rightful pretence in giving it over to a stranger prince; but seeing it belongs to the heirs of England after her death, you commit deadly sin and damnation in unjustly giving and taking away the right of others …32 How large a constituency Bradford spoke for is uncertain but the Queen was understandably concerned – and very annoyed. The letter not only denounced the prospect of a coronation, it accused Philip of sexual promiscuity in colourful terms, and these charges were not without foundation. Bradford would have had no means of knowing it, but the King’s Spanish servants were writing cautiously to each other about the need to keep Mary in ignorance of his ‘amusements’, 202

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  ‘because she is easily upset’. In a way all this anti-Spanish agitation played into the Queen’s hands because she had no desire to give Philip a coronation, and was able to use the popular protests as an excuse. She would have to refer the matter to Parliament, she claimed, and Parliament would never allow it. Nonsense, he replied, quite correctly. His coronation was none of Parliament’s business – it was a prerogative matter

  .33 However, on this issue the Queen would not budge and Philip became fi rst angry and then resigned. He may also have been considering that there were other possible ways of increasing his infl uence. He knew that Mary desperately wanted him back in England for personal as much as for political reasons – and that gave him leverage. He could try insisting upon his right to be consulted over major appointments. The Lord Privy Seal, the Earl of Bedford, had died in March 1555, and the Lord Chancellor, the Bishop of Winchester, in November. Neither of these offi ces had been fi lled in December 1555, and the Duke of Alba urged the King to make sure that his own men were promoted, rather than ‘Queen’s men’. Alba was not referring here to Spaniards, but to Englishmen ‘of the King’s devotion’, although the idea that the English council could be so divided may not have existed outside the Duke’s imag

  ination.34 Philip certainly was consulted and William, Lord Paget, who became Lord Privy Seal could perhaps be described as his man but Nicholas Heath, who was given the Great Seal, was at best a compromise. In neither case had Philip obviously controlled the appointment. The other way of asserting himself was to involve England in his war with France. War was, par excellence, the ‘matter impertinent to women’. Women could not be expected to lead armies, or to understand the logistics of warfare. Moreover, as Philip was well aware there was a party among the English nobility that, although it expressed a dutiful loyalty to its sovereign lady, was actually looking for male leadership. Once England was at war, the infl uence of that party was bound to increase and his own role would be augmented along with it. Philip had taken over the Crowns of Spain in January 1556, and one of his fi rst actions had been to sign the Truce of Vaucelles on 6 February. It was supposed to last for fi ve years but in fact broke down within months thanks to the provocative actions of Pope Paul IV, who has succeeded Julius III in March 1555. Paul was a Neapolitan, violently antiSpanish, and counting on the support of France, particularly the Duke of Guise. In September 1556 his actions in central Italy drove the profoundly Catholic Philip to order his armies into the Papal states. The Duke of Alba’s soldiers are alleged to have advanced on their knees. It was not long before the Duke of Guise appeared to the rescue, and full-scale war was resumed. It was at that point that Philip’s English policy turned to thoughts of involvement and the advantages of that course began to grow upon him. England was not a major power in military

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  terms, but it had a useful navy and might even be persuaded to disgorge some money if approached in the right manner.

  News of this impending approach came as a relief to Mary, who had been coping on her own with the government of England since August 1555. This was not, she felt, how it was meant to be. There were no foreign policy decisions to be made because the options had been foreclosed by her marriage. The only issue was how to counter the diplomatic hostility of France, so that in a way open war and the withdrawal of all French diplomats would be welcome. She also felt that her relationship with her husband had suffered by the long separation and by the issues that had arisen between them. Her own emotions blew hot and cold. Sometimes she was longing to have him back and writing pathetic letters to Charles asking for his intercession. Some times she was (apparently) kicking his picture around the Privy Chamber in sheer frustration at yet another round of prevar

  ication.35 It may also have occurred to her that when England was at war her husband would have a role as a national leader that would not encroach upon her own honour because it would be uniquely masculine. Altogether, there was a lot to be said for getting England into the war and when Philip indicated that he would be quite willing to come over and lean on the English to endorse the decision, then Mary’s mind was made up. Here at last was a way in which she could be a truly supportive wife without compromising her domestic authority. Unfortunately, her council did not agree. They pointed out that the terms of the marriage treaty exempted England from any involvement in the war that had been going on in 1554, and that that war had only been suspended by a truce, not broken by a peace. So the current confl ict was actually the same one that had been going on then, and not (as Philip claimed), a new one. Moreover, the country could not afford to go to war, lacking both military and fi nancial resources. When the King arrived in March 1557, to Mary’s chagrin, it presented him with a consulta, arguing the case against war.36 In fact, opinion in the country was divided. The merchant community, particularly in London, was deeply hostile but elsewhere gentlemen with pretensions to being soldiers were looking forward to the prospect and the French were generally even more unpopular that the Spaniards. Despite Mary’s support, Philip admitted that he found negotiations with the council unexpectedly uphill work. Two factors broke the deadlock. The fi rst was that the Council did not make decisions on issues of war and peace and although neither Philip nor Mary wanted to act without the Council’s consent, they were perfectly entitled to do so. The second was that a strange raid by a small group of English exiles on Scarborough, allegedly with French support, converted some councillors because of the provocation involved. 37 The council consequently, with reluctance and several dissenters, voted in favour of war, and 204

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  it was duly declared in June 1557. When Philip returned to the continent in July he was followed by an English expeditionary force under the command of the Earl of Pembroke – the only snag was that he found himself paying the bill. Insofar as the main purpose of Philip’s visit had been the declaration of war, it was successful. However his secondary purpose had been to pressure Princess Elizabeth into marriage with his trusted henchman, Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, and in that he failed totally. The King had by this time decided that if (or when) Mary died, it would not be worth his while to press his own claim to the succession. The mood of England was such that it would involve fi ghting a civil war and as long as his forces were fully committed against the French that was out of the question. The next best option would be to control the English heir through a favourable marriage, but Elizabeth could see that one coming and would have none of it. Rather curiously, Mary was also opposed to her husband on that issue and it was for that reason as much as the Princess’s own obstinacy that his bid failed. It may be that she simply did not want to contemplate the succession but from casual remarks that were dropped, it seems that the real reason may have been rather subtler. Mary had said some time before – even before her own marriage – that she did not want to contemplate Elizabeth as her heir ‘for certain respects in which she resemble
d her mother (Anne Boleyn).

  ’38 By 1557 it seems that she had convinced herself that Elizabeth was not really her father’s daughter at all but the child of one of Anne’s alleged lovers. The Duke of Savoy was far too good for such a bastard. For whatever reason, she would not consent to Philip putting the screws on Elizabeth, so he left without achieving his purpose. In spite of that, his personal relations with Mary seem to have returned to the state of the autumn of 1554, before false hopes of pregnancy disrupted their sexual activity. Five months later, the Queen announced that she was again pregnant and he allowed no fl icker of incredulity to diminish his congratulations. However, no one else believed her, either within England or outside of it, and the Cardinal of Lorraine is alleged to have remarked, not quite accurately, that it was eight months since her husband had left her. No preparations were made for a royal lying in and no nursery staff were appointed. Instead, in March 1558, when the child should have been due, Mary realized that she had been deceived again. She made her will later that month, refusing to admit that there would be no heir of her body but everyone else seems to have accepted that fact and wondered just ho

  w ill the Queen was.39 The winter of 1557–8 was depressing for a number of reasons. Not only was Mary deluding herself again with hopes of pregnancy, but the harvest failures of 1555 and 1556 had been followed by food shortages, and then by epidemic disease. The infl uenza of that winter was among the most deadly outbreaks of

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  the century, carrying off between 10 per cent and 15 per cent of the population and leaving thousands more debilitated for weeks on end.

  40 Equally bad was the fact that the war, which had started so promisingly with the victory at St Quentin in August, had gone from bad to worse and, in January 1558, the ancient English enclave of Calais fell to a surprise French attack. The Council, which had never ceased to have doubts about the war, had been saving money by reducing the garrison and the French knew this perfectly well. Worse still, Philip, who had done his best to save the place, then found himself being blamed for its loss, which was fair only to the extent that it had been his initiative that had taken England into the war in the fi rst place. It is not surprising that by the spring of 1558 the King was inclined to cut his losses in England. The pensions to his English supporters had long since fallen into arrears for the good reason that they were no longer supporting him. Missing her husband again, Mary had become increasingly reliant for personal support upon Reginald Pole, now the Cardinal Archbishop of Canterbury. Her stream of affectionate letters did not cease, but his responses became increasingly perfunctory. In fact, she was an embarrassment, because he was only 31 and urgently needed more children, which it was obvious to everyone (except Mary herself) that she would never bear. The French reported that he was considering an annulment but there is no fi rm evidence that his thinking had gone that far. The Count of Feria, who was representing him in England by this time, reported that the factions within the Council were again inhibiting good government. One of the few informal initiatives that Philip had been able to take during his stay in England from 1554–5 had been to knock heads together and persuade the council to adopt a suitable level of consensus. When he left, he arranged for a ‘Council of State’ or inner ring to report to him regularly on English affairs and it did so at least until the end of 1556. His second visit seems to have put an end to that arrangement, and after he left for the second and last time, new divisions opened up. Originally it had been Paget versus Gardiner, now it was Pole versus the rest. In fact there is little evidence of these confl icts, and Feria, like Renard before him, was mostly complaining that they were not acting suffi ciently in his master’s interests. However, that tells its own story. By the summer of 1558, Philip’s grip upon England was very slack indeed and if it had not been for the war might well have disappeared altogether. The Queen’s religious devotions had always been a bulwark of her life, and an ever-present comfort during times of affl iction – which had been only too frequent. Unfortunately, the negative side of that piety had become a fi erce determination to exterminate heresy. Heresy was to blame for all the ills that had affl icted England – the Church in ruins, the harvest failure, the infl uenza epidemic, the social disruption. In fact the positive work of Catholic restoration 206

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  had gone ahead very well since 1555. Parish churches and cathedrals had been restored, clergy recruitment was booming and good works of Catholic instruction were being published and used. Even a few new monasteries and chantries had been founded. However, the aspect of this restoration that will always be remembered is the fact that nearly 300 Protestants, men and women, humble and gentle, were burned alive and dozens more died in prison. This was not necessary and in the eyes of most bishops not desirable, but Mary’s sense of duty drove her on. Perhaps her biggest mistake had been to make a martyr out of Thomas Cranmer when he had been on the point of recanting, but the whole policy was extreme and quite at odds with everything else that we know about the Queen.

  She was a great supporter of what she called ‘good preaching’, using one of the heretics’ main weapons against themselves and was an enthusiastic promoter of clerical education, in which she agreed wholeheartedly with Cardinal Pole. She read her Bible, both in English and in Latin, and seems to have protected the former from the assaults of more radical sacerdotalists. She was in every other respect a gentle, merciful soul and her personal servants loved her dearly but she had this one terrible blind spot, and it earned her the name of ‘Bloody Mary’ by which she has been known to generations of English schoolchildren. In August 1558, Mary was ill, perhaps with a mild version of the lethal infl uenza, but appeared to shake it off. Then in early October, she fell ill again, and this time anxiety swiftly mounted. Philip wrote anxiously, because her usual regular letters had ceased but he did not come. Realizing that this illness might well prove fatal, he had no desire to be caught in England at the time of her death. This was not callous indifference but a realization that if he was in the country, his honour would require him to take control of the situation, and that might inhibit the lawful succession. So he stayed away, sending the Count of Feria back to England as his special envoy. By the time that he arrived, on 9 November, the end was visibly approaching:

  I … found the queen our lady’s health to be just as Dr Nunez describes in his letter to your majesty. There is, therefore, no hope of her life, but on the contrary, each hour I think that they will come to inform me of her death, so rapidly does her condition deteriorate from one day to the next …

  41 He then went on to describe the nervous condition of the council, who received him ‘like one coming with bulls from a dead pope’, and to speculate about how Elizabeth would handle the situation. When he wrote, on 14 November, Mary was still clinging to life, but she died early in the morning of 17 November, and within hours Elizabeth had been proclaimed in London. We cannot be sure

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  what killed her. It could have been a return of the infl uenza but contemporaries spoke of a ‘dropsy’, which seems to indicate a tumour. Probably the most likely explanation is that she died of cancer of the womb, a disease of which her false pregnancies had been advance warnings. She was interred with full traditional rites at Westminster on 14 December, and Bishop John White of Winchester pronounced the encomium:

  She was a king’s daughter, she was a king’s sister, she was a king’s wife, she was a queen and by the same title a king also. What she suffered in each of these degrees before and since she came to the Crown, I will not chronicle; only this I say, howsoever it pleased God to will her patience to be exercised in the world, she had in all estates the fear of God in her heart.

  42 The chief mourner was Margaret, Countess of Lennox. Mary had wanted Margaret to succeed her, in preference to her bastard and suspect half sister but towards the end had
recognized the inevitable – her people would have no one but Elizabeth. So her life ended in bitter failure and her kinsman and great supporter Reginald Pole followed her to the grave within hours. As we shall see, Elizabeth had a remarkably clean start, because Feria had already assured her of Philip’s goodwill and within months he was proposing marriage to her.

  It could be argued that Mary’s failure was due primarily to circumstances outside her control, particularly her early death at the age of 43 and the fact that her successor was so different. However, that would be to ignore some very important factors. She did not fail simply because she was a woman. The statute of recognition took care of that disability but her marriage was a serious mistake and from that fl owed much of her misfortune. Marriage was necessary if the succession was to be secured and there was no way in which she could have known how that would work out. But why Philip? He was a Habsburg, represented the traditional Burgundian alliance and was a good Catholic. But in other respects he was a disaster waiting to happen. The Spaniards were seriously unpopular, thanks largely to the ‘black legend’ which was spreading from Italy and the Low Countries. Philip spoke no English, had no knowledge of the country, and was inclined to be contemptuous of its nobility, whom he regarded as venal. He was also the immediate heir to Spain and to its empire in the New World. He would soon have little enough time for England, whatever the expectations. Being married to so great a Prince also undermined Mary to some extent; she was so anxious to please him and yet so conscious of her duties to her own realm. The emotional tensions seem to have torn her apart – and that could (and should) have been foreseen. The answer is that she married Philip largely to please his father, her ancient protector, and that no man would have done. Nor 208