Read Behind the Palace Doors Online
Authors: Michael Farquhar
Behind the Palace Doors (5 page)
It was Jane Grey’s father, the Duke of Suffolk, who was originally charged with subduing the growing movement around
Mary and capturing her. Upon learning this, however, Jane burst into tears and begged that her father remain with her in London. The task then fell to Northumberland and his sons. “Since ye think it good,” the duke said to the council, “I and mine will go, not doubting of your fidelity to the Queen’s majesty which I leave in your custody.”
Northumberland was wily enough to know that the men around him were all driven by self-interest, and that by leaving London he was exposing himself to betrayal should events turn in Mary’s favor. Thus, he reminded them that he and his companions were risking their lives “amongst the bloody strokes and cruel assaults” of the enemy with the trust that the council would protect their interests at home. He warned anyone who might violate that trust and “leave us your friends in the briars and betray us” that he could in turn destroy them. More important, it would be a damnable betrayal of the sacred oath of allegiance they had sworn “to this virtuous lady the Queen’s highness, who by your and our enticement is rather of force placed therein [upon the throne] than by her own seeking and request.” The duke then concluded by praying that the council “wish me no worse speed in this journey than ye would have to yourselves.”
As Northumberland’s force prepared to leave London to “fetch in the Lady Mary … to destroy her grace,”
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the rightful queen of England was rallying her supporters at Framlingham Castle, a stronghold she possessed near the Suffolk coast. It was a vivid display of royal might as Mary rode among the thousands gathered in her name, stirring them into battle. “Long live our good Queen Mary!” they shouted. “Death to traitors!”
It was far from the reception Northumberland received. “The people press to see us, but not one sayeth God speed us,”
the duke noted to a companion as they rode through the village of Shoreditch. In addition to the lack of popular support for his mission, Northumberland was faced not only with dissension among his own ranks but with desertion as well. Then came the crowning blow to his cause: A fleet of seven warships he had sent up the coast to prevent Mary from escaping now switched to her side. “After once the submission of the ships was known in the Tower,” wrote an eyewitness, “each man then began to pluck in his horns.”
The betrayal Northumberland had feared became real as he received “but a slender answer” from the council on his request for reinforcements. As town after town came out for Mary, the men who had sworn allegiance to Jane less than two weeks earlier abruptly switched sides. On the afternoon of July 19 they publicly proclaimed Mary queen, prompting a spontaneous eruption of joy in the city.
“As not a soul imagined the possibility of such a thing,” one eyewitness reported, “when the proclamation was first cried out the people started off, running in all directions and crying out: ‘The Lady Mary is proclaimed Queen!’ ”
While people celebrated wildly in the streets, Lady Jane was all but abandoned in the Tower. Even her father walked away, but not before ripping down the royal cloth of estate that had hung over her chair. Meanwhile, Northumberland surrendered in Cambridge without a struggle. He was arrested by one of his own confederates, the Earl of Arundel, who only a week before had sworn to die for him.
“I beseech you, my lord of Arundel, use mercy towards me, knowing the case as it is,” Northumberland said.
“My Lord,” answered Arundel, “ye should have sought for mercy sooner; I must do according to my commandment.”
The once mighty duke was pelted with stones and insults by the outraged populace as he was led to the Tower in chains. “A dreadful sight it was,” wrote the imperial envoy Simon Renard,
“and a strange mutation for those who, a few days before, had seen the Duke enter London Tower with great pomp and magnificence when the Lady Jane went there to take possession, and now saw him led like a criminal and dubbed traitor.”
With her mortal enemy now locked away, Queen Mary rode triumphantly into London among cheering crowds. She was dressed to dazzle in purple velvet, adorned with pearls and precious stones. And though she bore the marks of bitterness and deprivation that had stolen her youth, she was prepared to be merciful to her enemies.
Northumberland would, of course, have to die for his high crimes, which he did after making a dramatic repudiation of the Protestant faith he had espoused, but Lady Jane would be spared. The so-called Nine Days Queen swore to Mary in a long letter that she had never willingly participated in Northumberland’s plans: “For whereas I might have taken upon me that of which I was not worthy, yet no one can ever say either that I sought it … or that I was pleased with it.”
Though Jane remained in the Tower, it was expected that she would be released before long. After all, her father was free after having been forgiven for his part in Northumberland’s conspiracy, and her mother enjoyed high favor in the court of her cousin the queen.
All seemed well until Mary made a momentous decision that would rock the kingdom, destabilize her throne, and destroy Jane Grey.
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Jane once confided to a tutor her miserable situation at home: “For when I am in the presence of either Father or Mother, whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand or go, eat, drink, be merry or sad, be sewing, playing, dancing, or doing anything else, I must do it as it were in such weight, measure and number, even so perfectly as God made the world; or else I am so sharply taunted, so cruelly threatened, yea presented sometimes with pinches, nips and bobs and other ways … that I think myself in hell.”
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Spinola also left a vivid description of the teenaged usurper: “This Jane is very short and thin, but prettily shaped and graceful. She has small features and a well-made nose, the mouth flexible and the lips red. The eyebrows are arched and darker than her hair, which is nearly red. Her eyes are sparkling and reddish brown in color. I stood so near her grace that I noticed her color was good but freckled. When she smiled she showed her teeth, which are white and sharp. In all a gracious and animated figure. She wore a dress of green velvet stamped with gold, with large sleeves. Her headdress was a white coif with many jewels.”
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As recorded in the diary of a London merchant by the name of Henry Machyn.
This marriage renders me happier than I can say.
—Q
UEEN
M
ARY
I
Queen Mary I became the first woman to rule England in her own right after defeating the Duke of Northumberland and his puppet, Jane Grey, in 1553. The Catholic queen’s five-year reign was a disaster, most notably because of her fierce persecution of Protestants, which has blighted her reputation ever since. Even her marriage was a failure
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Shortly before she became infamous as Bloody Mary, England’s first queen regnant was a blushing bride. She had come to the throne in 1553, after enduring decades of appalling abuse and neglect. Her father had cruelly discarded her mother, Katherine of Aragon, and terrorized Mary as a young woman for refusing to acknowledge herself as a bastard and him as Supreme Head of the Church in England. Then, under the reign of her fanatically Protestant half brother, Edward VI, she was threatened for practicing her Catholic faith and, in the end, deprived of her rightful place in the succession. Now, a year after her triumphant accession, the woman who once described herself as “the unhappiest lady in Christendom” was absolutely giddy with anticipation.
The queen’s betrothed was her younger cousin Philip of
Spain, son of Emperor Charles V. Mary had been reluctant about the match at first, fearing not only the reaction of her xenophobic subjects to a foreign prince but Philip’s reaction to her. She was pushing forty and was totally inexperienced with the opposite sex. Philip, on the other hand, was eleven years younger and known for his way with the ladies. It took some gentle coaxing from the emperor, in whom she put all her trust, before the queen was convinced. Once she was, Mary became like a giggly schoolgirl. All her hopes and dreams were now focused on Philip, the dashing prince who she believed would not only help her bring England back to the pope in Rome but would satisfy her deepest longings for love.
The queen told the emperor’s representative, Simon Renard, that he “had made her fall in love with [Philip],” then added jokingly that “his Highness might not be obliged to him for it, though she would do her best to please him in every way.”
One person stood in the way of the queen’s happiness, however, and that was Lady Jane Grey. Mary had forgiven her young cousin for accepting the crown, and was even prepared to release her from the Tower. But then a rebellion broke out in opposition to the queen’s proposed marriage to Philip, and Jane’s father, the Duke of Suffolk, was one of the ringleaders. The rebels were decisively crushed, but Simon Renard made it clear to the queen that the emperor would never allow his son to come to England while Jane Grey still lived as the focus of future uprisings. “Let the Queen’s mercy be tempered with a little severity,” Charles V said. And so on February 12, 1554, the Nine Days Queen, not yet seventeen years old, lost her head.
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Popular opposition to the queen’s marriage was not quelled by Jane’s death. Spain was a hated enemy, and it was unthinkable to many that Mary would import a Spanish prince to rule over them. The Speaker of the House of Commons even dared remonstrate with the queen personally on the matter, but to no avail. Mary had sworn she would wed Philip, and she would never retreat from that vow.
As the queen’s excitement grew to bursting, the prince of Spain finally came to England in the middle of July 1554. Several days before the wedding at Winchester Cathedral, Mary met him for the first time. She was delighted by what she saw, running up to Philip and kissing him when he entered the room. Clearly he had lived up to the dignified portrait by Titian that had so far been the queen’s only contact with the man who was to rule England by her side.
Philip treated Mary with perfect decorum when he met her, but his gentlemen were quite disappointed by her appearance. Years of care and worry had taken their toll. “The queen is not at all beautiful,” one of Philip’s companions wrote. “Small, and rather flabby than fat, she is of white complexion and fair, and has no eyebrows.” As biographer Carolly Erickson noted, Mary “looked exactly what she was: Philip’s maiden aunt.”
The Venetian ambassador was a little bit kinder in his assessment of the queen’s appearance:
She is of low rather than of middling stature, but, although short, she has not personal defect in her limbs, nor is any part of her body deformed. She is of spare and delicate frame, quite unlike her father, who was tall and stout; nor does she resemble her mother, who, if not tall, was
nevertheless bulky. Her face is well formed, as shown by her features and lineaments, and as seen by her portraits. When younger she was considered, not merely tolerably handsome, but of beauty exceeding mediocrity. At present, with the exception of some wrinkles, caused more by anxieties than by age, which makes her appear some years older, her aspect, for the rest, is very grave. Her eyes are so piercing that they inspire not only respect, but fear in those on whom she fixes them, although she is very shortsighted, being unable to read or do anything else unless she has her sight quite close to what she wishes to peruse or to see distinctly. Her voice is rough and loud, almost like a man’s, so that when she speaks she is always heard a long way off. In short, she is a seemly woman, and never to be loathed for ugliness, even at her present age, without considering her degree of queen.
Winchester Cathedral, stripped of much of its ornate magnificence by Henry VIII, was temporarily restored to some of its former glory for the queen’s wedding. Rich tapestries and cloth of gold were hung. On either side of the altar were two canopied chairs for the bride and groom (which can still be seen today). Mary’s gown was of black velvet studded with precious stones, over which she wore a mantle of gold cloth matching that worn by Philip. The queen, one observer wrote, “blazed with jewels to such an extent that the eye was blinded as it looked upon her.”
After the wedding a sumptuous feast was held at the bishop of Winchester’s palace. The newlyweds then retired to lodgings specially prepared for them. “What happened that night only they know,” one of the Spanish guests wrote. “If they give us a son our joy will be complete.”
That would never happen, but before Mary was forced to reconcile herself to being barren, among other future woes, she was simply a smitten new wife. The queen wrote to her father-in-law,
Charles V, after the wedding to thank him “for allying me with a prince so full of virtues that the realm’s honor and tranquility will certainly be thereby increased. This marriage renders me happier than I can say, as I daily discover in the King my husband so many virtues and perfections that I constantly pray God to grant me grace to please him, and behave in all things as befits one who is so deeply embounden to him.”