Bloody Mary (44 page)

Mary was not unique in her financial difficulties, of course. Late in 1553 the French king was trying desperately to borrow all the money he could, and was taking his nobles’ plate to melt down for coins. The emperor too was borrowing enormous sums from the Flemish bankers, and the regent had had to take a loan of two million florins in 1552. But in the empire finance was a vast drama in which the imperial treasury was repeatedly saved from bankruptcy by the timely arrival of ships heavy with the plundered riches of the New World. As Mary’s agent Gresham was toiling to squeeze sixty thousand florins from the reluctant Antwerp banker Jaspar Schetz, Charles V’s financial clerks were weighing out newly arrived treasure from the Americas worth five million ducats in gold.
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However serious England’s financial problems might be, the men who came to Mary’s first Parliament in October and November were preoccupied with the dismaying probability of the queen’s marriage to a powerful foreigner. They thought in terms of the legal and political hazards of the match, and of the impossibility of binding either party to fulfill their contractual agreements. “In case the bonds should be broken between the husband and wife,” one member asked, “each of them being Princes in their own country, who shall sue the bonds?”
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There was no natural arbiter for marital quarrels when the spouses were both sovereigns in their own right, and if Philip would need no defender in such quarrels, Mary almost certainly would. On November 16 a delegation from the Commons, led by Speaker Pollard and accompanied by some dozen or more of the councilors, met with the queen in an effort to dissuade her from marrying Philip. The delegation was superfluous, as Mary had already given her solemn oath to go ahead with the marriage and most of the Council members had been won over to supporting it. But the Commons knew nothing of this, and the Speaker had taken pains preparing an eloquent discourse for the occasion.

His speech was very solemn and very long, “full of art and rhetoric and illustrated by historical examples.” He told Mary how it would displease the people to have a foreigner as the queen’s consort, and how the foreigners in his retinue would make themselves hateful and “lord it over the English.” If Mary died childless her husband would lose no time in carrying money, artillery, and everything else of value back to his own
country. He might decide to take her out of the country too, “out of husbandly tyranny,” and if she left him a widower with young children he would probably try to usurp the throne for himself.

Mary listened to this outpouring for a time, but the longer it went on the more exasperated she became. Pollard had unfortunately forgotten his notes, and his extemporaneous ramblings were, she later told Renard, “so confused, so long-winded and prolific of irrelevant arguments” that she found them irritating and offensive. As he spoke Mary was formulating a point-by-point reply, for she had decided to depart from the customary practice of allowing the chancellor to answer on behalf of the sovereign. When Pollard finally finished she rose to address the assembly.

She thanked them dryly for advising her to marry, but as for the rest of the advice “she found it very strange.” It was hardly traditional for Parliament to recommend to the ruler whom she should marry, nor was it “suitable or respectful.” Mary tossed off her arguments with skill, her words judicious but full of anger and occasional sarcasm. History showed that even when the ruler was a minor Parliament had never interfered with the choice of a consort. All the nobles present could vouch for the fact that the behavior of the Commons was unprecedented and thoroughly inappropriate. Furthermore, if she were forced to marry a man who did not please her she would die within three months, leaving the kingdom worse off than ever and defeating the prime purpose of the marriage—namely the birth of an heir. With this direct and telling threat she closed her rebuttal, assuring the Speaker and his colleagues that she had the good of the kingdom as much in mind as they did, and that in the question of her marriage, as in all her other affairs, she would be guided by the inspiration of God.

The extraordinary sight of the queen answering the Speaker in person made almost as great an impression on her audience as the force of her logic. The nobles present backed her in this, and “said she was right,” while Arundel afterward ridiculed Gardiner, saying that “he had lost his post of Chancellor that day, for the Queen had usurped it,” and the other councilors laughed heartily at his expense. Mary had in fact become contemptuous of what she perceived as Gardiner’s equivocation. It had not taken her long to understand his tricks, she told Renard. One day he would assure her, when it suited his purpose, that the people would obey her, while the next day, “speaking on a matter that touched him personally,” he would try to frighten her with the prospect of rebellion.
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She was beginning to understand why the Protestants called her chancellor “Doctor Doubleface,” and was finding that there was more to the accusation than Gardiner’s embarrassing change of views on the question of Henry VIII’s marriage to Katherine.

Mary suspected Gardiner, in fact, of prompting the Speaker to address
her on the subject of her marriage, and of supplying him with his arguments. Several days after her meeting with Pollard and the Commons she confronted the chancellor and accused him of intrigue with the Speaker, She wanted him to understand, once and for all, that no matter what means he used to persuade her otherwise she would never marry Courte-nay. The Speaker’s “disrespectful words” had nearly made her angry, she said, and she did not intend to listen to any more advice about what husband to choose.

The chancellor broke down completely. He confessed with tears that he had spoken with Pollard and coached him in his speech, and that it was true he had always been fond of Courtenay ever since then-imprisonment together, Mary asked Gardiner disdainfully whether he seriously meant to suggest that she marry a man just because he had befriended him in prison, and then went on to give a cogent summary of the extreme disadvantages of Courtenay as a consort—his “small power and authority,” his intrigues with the French, England’s need for money, and so on. Finally the chancellor gave in entirely, saying that “it would not be right to try to force her in one direction or another,” and swearing to “obey the man she had chosen.”
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Mary emerged unscathed from her encounters with Parliament and the chancellor, and with an added measure of authority. Renard’s fears for her competence were quieted, at least for the moment, and he admired her “steadfastness and courage” in dealing with Gardiner, But the marriage question, important though it was, had little to do with the deeper issues that divided the country. Parliament had begun to come to terms with some of these, revoking the “corrupt and unlawful sentence” of Henry’s divorce from Katherine and, by implication, making Elizabeth a bastard again. Jane and Guilford Dudley were attainted, along with Cranmer, and a further step was taken to rid the country of the archbishop’s Protestant liturgy when a law was passed making it illegal to perform any service but that in use at the time of Henry VlII’s death after December 20 of the present year. All of Edward’s Protestant statutes were repealed, after a week of “marvelous dispute,” but the principle that the sovereign and not the pope ruled the English church remained intact. Mary had got around using the term “Supreme Head” in her title, but she had to sit by and allow Parliament to retain it on her behalf in its laws.

Any further progress toward a complete return to Catholicism would have been impossible, for throughout the parliamentary sessions there were outbreaks of violence over the clergy and the mass. In one village church an arquebus was aimed at the priest who was saying mass, but it misfired. In Norfolk and Kent parishioners rioted and prevented mass from being celebrated, and it was being said that elsewhere two priests
had actually been killed. Mary herself had been living with assassination threats since September, and it was a mark of her courage and flair for rulership that she continued to appear in public ceremonies and court audiences as freely as if no danger existed. Several plots against Gardiner’s life had been uncovered since the reign began, forcing him to move into Mary’s palace in order to be under her protection.
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A week before Parliament dissolved Mary’s courtiers were seriously frightened. As the queen was passing through a gallery on her way to vespers, accompanied by Elizabeth and a number of others, an unseen voice cried out loudly “Treason!” The courtiers scattered, but Mary, unperturbed by the alarm, went on into the chapel to hear the office. It was later found that the accusation was meant for Gardiner, and came from a man the bishop had imprisoned many years earlier for writing a treatise in defense of Katherine of Aragon; but at the time no one doubted that the cry was directed at the queen. Elizabeth was so frightened she turned pale and “could not compose her countenance.” She was amazed, she said, that Mary had not retired to safety after receiving such a warning, given the danger of an attack on her person. Elizabeth herself could not stop trembling, and had to get Susan Clarencieux to rub her stomach until the color came back to her face and she was able to join Mary at the altar.

Our life is a warfare, the worlde is the fielde:

Her highnes her army hath alwayes at hande;

For Hope is her helmet, Faith is her shielde,

And Love is her brestplate, her foes to withstand.

In a “Memorial” he sent her two weeks after her coronation Renard outlined to Mary the dangers she faced as queen, as he saw them. “You have four certain and open enemies,” he told her: “the heretics and schismatics, the rebels and adherents of the duke of Northumberland, the king of France and Scotland, and the Lady Elizabeth.” These opponents might appear to be quiescent from time to time, but their menace could never be ignored. “They will watch for a propitious moment for carrying out their plans,” Renard wrote, “and your Majesty must always bear these four adversaries in mind and guard against them.”
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Of the four enemies, Dudley’s adherents had been dealt with most directly, if inconclusively. The duke and two of his captains had been executed, and his sons and daughter-in-law Jane were condemned prisoners in the Tower. Northampton and Suffolk had been imprisoned briefly, then released, while the marquis of Winchester, Pembroke and ten others who had signed the Device disinheriting Mary now sat on her Council. Mary’s decision not only to pardon Dudley’s councilors but to give most of them places in her government was widely criticized; giving Suffolk his freedom soon proved to be especially dangerous.

As for the heretics and schismatics—by which Renard meant Protestants of all kinds—their opposition was growing. Mary was showing wise moderation in moving the country back toward Catholicism very slowly, but the most committed opponents of the old faith were becoming more and more vociferous in defense of their beliefs. Here Cranmer showed the way. Mary had been lenient in her treatment of the archbishop,
confining him to his house but stopping short of imprisoning him as a traitor. When it was said that he might submit himself to the queen’s mercy and return to the church of Rome, however, he demonstrated the strength of his faith by writing a bitter attack on the mass; in a very short space of time he joined the former bishop of London, Ridley, and the fiery Protestant preacher Latimer in the Tower. Cranmer’s defiance put heart into his coreligionists, who met Mary’s attempts at conciliation with vehement arguments and symbolic insults. Toward the end of October a theological discussion was arranged, at which four learned Protestants were to debate six Catholic doctors. The meeting coincided with parliamentary debate over alterations in the religious laws, but instead of enlightening the lawmakers the theologians nearly came to blows. Reasoned discussion gave way to “scandalous wrangling,” leaving Parliament and the public disgusted.
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On the day Parliament rose anonymous troublemakers took a dead dog, shaved its head in the form of a priest’s tonsure, and heaved it through the windows of the royal presence chamber.

The hopes of the Protestants hinged on the last of Mary’s enemies—her half-sister Elizabeth. Mary and Elizabeth inherited their hatred of one another from their mothers, and though Mary made a sincere effort to be charitable toward her younger sister there was never any neutral ground between them. Mary could never perceive Elizabeth as anything but a bastard, telling Renard sarcastically that she was “the offspring of one of whose good fame he might have heard, and who had received her punishment.”
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According to Jane Dormer, the queen clung firmly to the old slander that Elizabeth was not the daughter of Henry VIII at all but of the musician Mark Smeaton; she had Smeaton’s “face and countenance,” Mary liked to say, and her own morals were no more admirable than her mother’s had been.
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Elizabeth had been guilty of an indiscreet flirtation with Thomas Seymour as a young girl, and she had acquired a reputation for promiscuity. It was hardly to be expected that the daughter of Anne Boleyn would grow into a woman of outstanding virtue, and Mary liked to cite the “characteristics in which she resembled her mother” as an important reason for keeping Elizabeth from coming to the throne.
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Renard found the princess to be like Anne in another respect. She possessed, he wrote, “a bewitching personality,” a power to entrap others and make them do her will. He was certain Elizabeth was using her beguilements on Courtenay, knowing that to marry him would give her access to the queen through Courtenay’s mother.

Mary and Elizabeth were far apart in age—Mary was thirty-seven, Elizabeth twenty—as well as in parentage, temperament and, most important, religion. When Protestant preachers spoke of the future they liked to say that the papists were “having their turn” but that Elizabeth would remedy all in time.
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Nevertheless Mary insisted at the outset of her reign
that Elizabeth observe the Catholic ceremonies, knowing full well that a genuine conversion was a remote possibility. When rumors persisted that Elizabeth’s attendance at mass was mere hypocrisy Mary brought the issue out in the open, asking her sister “whether she firmly believed what the Catholics now believed and had always believed concerning the holy sacrament?” Elizabeth insisted that she went to mass “of her own free will and without fear, hypocrisy or dissimulation,” adding that she had considered making a public declaration to that effect. Mary was relieved to see how timid her sister appeared to be, and how she trembled when she talked to her, but to Renard her behavior indicated that she was lying about the mass, and guilty of plotting against the queen besides.
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When Elizabeth left court in October Mary embraced her and made her a gift of an expensive sable hood and two strings of beautiful pearls, but Paget and Arundel sent her off with a harsh warning against becoming involved in any conspiracy to dethrone the queen.

Any plot likely to involve Elizabeth would more than likely include Antoine de Noailles, ambassador of the “king of France and Scotland” whom Renard had identified as Mary’s third enemy. Noailles was a French nobleman of high birth whose large and varied staff of informers compensated for his modest diplomatic abilities. He had spies everywhere—in the royal court, in the households of Mary’s councilors, among the merchants, gentlemen and ne’er-do-wells who frequented the capital. They included a French bookseller welcome in Renard’s house, a Flemish servant of Paget’s, one of Courtenay’s servants, and a Scottish physician said to dabble in poisons as a sideline. Among the professional informers in Noailles’ pay were fitienne Quiclet, a native of Besancon who had been Renard’s
maître d’hôtel
and who made his living selling imperial secrets to the French, and Jean de Fontenay, sieur de Berteville, a sometime wine merchant and soldier of fortune who marketed military secrets and had on occasion been imprisoned as a double agent.

Like all ambassadors Noailles made informers of his own servants too, and what Quiclet and Berteville could not tell him he could often find out from his cook, his well-traveled couriers or his Scots groom. For a time the Venetian ambassador Soranzo made his knowledge and his staff available to Noailles as well, in the belief that helping the French might offset the growth of Hapsburg power, but among the Frenchman’s most valuable spies was a man whose only political objective was to keep England free of foreign domination: the Surrey gentleman Sir John Leigh. Leigh was on the closest terms with Rochester, Walgrave, Englefield and a fourth member of Gardiner’s faction, Sir Richard Southwell. Through Leigh Noailles could trace the progress of the marriage negotiations during December and January, and was able to plan with greater accuracy how he would undermine the entire project as the new year began.
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The treachery of these volatile opponents of Mary’s rule had not retarded the course of the marriage negotiations, which by the end of the year had resulted in a definitive treaty. The articles called for each sovereign to enjoy title to the other’s lands, but no authority there. Philip was, however, to “assist his consort in the task of government”—a vague phrase meant to describe the indefinable but extensive influence he might be expected to exert on Mary’s policies as queen. Philip was not to attempt to appoint Spaniards to positions at court or in the government, or to depart to any extent from the “laws, privileges and customs” of the realm. If Mary died childless Philip would have no further connection with England; in the unlikely event that he predeceased her she was to enjoy a generous dower.

Apart from the guarantee that Philip would not bring England into any present or future imperial war against the French, the most important clauses in the marriage articles discussed the rights of the children that might be born to the couple. Philip already had a son, Don Carlos, who would inherit Spain and certain other continental possessions. The oldest son of Philip and Mary would inherit both England and the Low Countries, the latter being Philip’s own future inheritance from his father. If there were no son, the oldest daughter was to rule England but not the Low Countries, except on condition that she marry with Don Carlos’ consent. And if the Spanish prince should die without heirs, his lands—including the Spanish empire in the New World—would pass to Mary’s heir. In theory at least, the next sovereign to rule England could come into possession of nearly half the known world.

Given this possibility it was essential that the negotiators consider how the country would be governed in case Mary died leaving a minor heir. The emperor foresaw the possibility very clearly, but told his clerks to omit all mention of it in the treaty. He explained his reasoning in a letter to Renard. He wanted to avoid making the English suspicious, he said, and also to take advantage of the unwritten premise of the law that in the event of a wife’s death her husband became legal administrator of their children’s persons and goods.
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Philip could hardly have asked for more advantageous terms himself—if he had been consulted. But he was not consulted, and as soon as he signed the final draft of the treaty he signed another document invalidating it completely. In this appended clause he swore “by our Lord, by Saint Mary and by the Sign of the Cross” that the marriage articles were “invalid and without force to bind him.”
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In declaring himself free of his oath Philip was following a time-honored diplomatic precedent, but he was also letting his father know how much a matter of form he considered the English match to be. He would be obedient, but he did not
intend to be foolhardy; he would keep the terms of the treaty only as long as they complemented his other commitments, and no longer.

Philip was being ordered about like a child. He was told to choose his retinue with care, bringing to England only gentlemen of “sufficient age” and judgment to behave themselves and not spend all their money right away. As for their servants, they should be honest and responsible, and not the kind of men to worsen the already bad reputation of Spaniards among Englishmen. Philip was given instructions about provisioning his ships and limiting the number of his soldiers, and even about being “friendly and cordial” to the English. The emperor thought it necessary to advise his son “to demonstrate much love and joy to the queen, and to do so both in public and in private” once he arrived, and to send her a ring or some other token once the betrothal was formalized.
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Sending obvious recommendations of this kind had to be either superfluous or futile. At twenty-six Philip either knew already how to provision a ship and please a bride or else he would never learn.

At the end of December four marriage commissioners delegated by the emperor from Brussels landed in England. At their head was Count Egmont, who brought with him plenty of money and jewels to distribute among the English councilors, plus ten thousand ducats for gambling expenses. “With the English, more than with any other people in the world, money has power,” Egmont wrote to Philip in Spain, and in fact Philip was already giving thought to how he would store the million gold ducats he planned to bring with him on his own journey some months hence. More money was sent to Renard to give out to people he hoped would “speak and act favorably” about the coming marriage, and to others who, without bribes, might “do harm and cause difficulties.”
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The imperial commissioners were prepared to face a few days of hard bargaining. The emperor had warned Renard that “the English usually consider prudence in negotiation to consist in raising as many objections as they can think of.” Each of the queen’s councilors would feel impelled to find at least one issue to debate—otherwise he would not be a good servant to his mistress. But before long this display of zealous disputation would give way to agreement, and the treaty would be signed with good will on both sides.

Events followed Charles V’s scenario closely. After resting for a few days near the coast the four commissioners made their way to London, arriving at Tower Wharf on January 2. They sat patiently throughout the expected flurry of objections from the English, then put their names to the marriage articles, and on January 14 and 15 Gardiner presented them to assemblies of the nobility and the citizens of London. At the bargaining table all went smoothly, but in the streets of the capital the
emperor’s representatives were received with hostility. When their servants arrived on New Year’s Day boys threw snowballs at them as they rode to their lodgings, and there were no cheering crowds to welcome Egmont and his colleagues when they disembarked.