Bloody Mary (49 page)

If Mary delayed Pole’s return to England for political reasons, the emperor encouraged the delay for quite different reasons of his own. A year earlier Renard had written him that Mary had more regard for Pole than for all the members of her Council put together, and the last thing Charles wanted was another influential man at Mary’s court, Philip, not Pole, must remain the primary source of support and advice to the queen. Yet as much as Mary loved her husband, she was bound to the cardinal by unique ties. Both had known their happiest times in the days before England’s breach with Rome. Both had had their lives shattered by the king’s divorce; both had lost their mothers to the king’s cruelty. Both had lived through years of isolation and suffering for the sake of the Catholic faith, living in danger of death yet believing that in the end their fidelity would result in a glorious vindication.

The remarkable similarity of their emotional experience, plus the natural affinity between them, meant that Pole’s influence on Mary would be very great—and very harmful. For of all the men around the queen who minimized her authority, Pole was the most blatant. He had not been with her at Framlingham; he had not heard her speech at the Guildhall when Wyatt was at the gates of London. He had not seen her handle Gardiner or Paget, or assert her will eloquently In Parliament. He assumed that she was weak and incapable, and he had the effect of making her believe it too.

In one other respect his advice was misguided. He assumed that the religious situation in England was not unlike that in Italy, where the Protestant heresy had taken rather shallow root and had been decisively crushed by the papal Inquisition. He would never realize how profoundly the English had changed during their generation of independence from papal rule, and how hardy English Protestantism had become. Restoration of the Catholic faith in England was a far greater challenge than Pole was prepared to undertake when he sailed in the queen’s barge from Gravesend to London on that November day, his silver cross shining over the prow.

On the afternoon of November 28 the cardinal came before Parliament at Whitehall and spoke to the members about the purpose of his commission. After praising Mary—“a virgin, helpless, naked, and unarmed,” who “prevailed and had the victory over tyrants”—he explained that he had been given the power to formally reunite England with the church of Rome, in a spirit of forgiveness and welcome. “My commission
is not of prejudice to any person,” he told them. “I come to reconcile, not to condemn. I come not to compel, but to call again.” Most important, he assured the members indirectly that once England was rejoined to Rome no attempt would be made to take back the lands that had once belonged to the church but had long since been in private hands. “Touching all matters that be past,” he said, “they shall be as things cast into the sea of forgetfulness.”
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Two days later Parliament made its official request for reunion with Rome. It was in the form of a petition to Philip and Mary, as “persons undefiled in the offence of this body,” to intercede with the legate to grant the papal pardon. The Lords and Commons fell on their knees, and Pole pronounced the absolution. A public absolution was made the following Sunday. The legate came to St. Paul’s, his cross and poleaxes carried before him. There he met Gardiner and a crowd of bishops and clergy, and a Te Deum was sung. Afterward they met Philip, who had come from Westminster with a great many of the courtiers and his four hundred guardsmen. A huge crowd of fifteen thousand people—the largest crowd ever seen in St. Paul’s churchyard, it was said—heard Gardiner deliver a two-hour sermon on the text “It is time to awake out of sleep.” At its end he announced that Pole had given him the authority to absolve all who were present. The entire crowd knelt for his blessing. “A sight to be seen it was,” wrote a Spanish eyewitness. “And the silence was such that not a cough was heard.”

The reunion with Rome was nearly complete. Now all that remained was for Parliament to enact the legal instruments that would restore the ancient faith by statute. During December this task was accomplished. In the lengthy Second Statute of Repeal all legislation hindering the authority of the pope in England was repealed, and the country declared absolved of its schismatic errors. All the clergy ordained and promoted since the schism began were declared confirmed in their orders and benefices. All the marriages performed by schismatic clerics were made legal, and the children born of them legitimate. The judgments made by the church courts were upheld, and the current possessors of church lands were confirmed in their possessions, “clear from all dangers of the censures of the church.” In view of the expected birth there was legislation providing for the eventuality of Mary’s death in childbirth. Philip was declared regent for the heir to the throne should the queen die while he or she was a minor. Philip expected a proposal to be made to crown him king, but there was none.

More ominous was the revival, soon after the absolution was declared, of medieval statutes prescribing how heretics tried in church courts were to be handed over to the civil officials for execution. How this bill was brought before Parliament is unclear, but it was not an un
usual proposal in a session preoccupied with religious affairs. It was in any case a purely procedural change, since the death penalty for heresy was a punishment of long standing. Whatever its origin, the bill passed unanimously.

In political terms, the reunion with Rome was at best a compromise. The Lords and Commons were willing to rejoin the Catholic confession only if they were allowed to keep the spoils of the dissolution. The spiritual rights of the church could be restored as long as its temporal wealth remained in private hands. But to Mary this flaw in the proceedings was of little consequence compared to the overwhelming triumph she had gained. What her father had destroyed she and Pole had built up again. And if there were any doubt that God was directing the course of events to fulfill his will, Mary had special proof of his favor. She had received a holy sign.

In the gospel of Luke the writer described the meeting of the virgin Mary and her cousin Elizabeth. Both women were pregnant, Mary with Jesus and Elizabeth with John, the future John the Baptist. When Elizabeth saw Mary she felt her child leap within her, in recognition of Mary’s son. When Mary Tudor first glimpsed Cardinal Pole, she believed she could feel her child leap in her womb.

If hap may aunswere hope,

And hope may have his hire,

Then shall my hart possess in peace,

The time that I desire.

Mary’s quickening was celebrated with a ceremony of thanksgiving at St. Paul’s on November 28, with the preacher taking as his theme the words of the angel to the virgin Mary: “Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favor with God.”
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The clergy made a solemn procession around the circuit of the church, chanting “
Salve, festa dies”
as on a festival day, and at every mass from then on special prayers were offered for the birth of a prince. “Give therefore unto thy servants Philip our king and Mary our queen, a male issue,” ran one of these prayers, “which may sit in the seat of thy kingdom.” Make him, the supplicant asked, “in body comely and beautiful, in pregnant wit notable and excellent, in obedience like Abraham, in hospitality like Lot, in strength and valor like Samson.”

Every imaginable biblical parallel was employed to persuade God to perform the miracle of a safe delivery. If the barren Elizabeth—to whom Mary compared herself—and the ninety-year-old Sarah could bring forth sons, then so could the thirty-nine-year-old queen; the God who “didst safely deliver the prophet Jonas out of the whale’s belly” could surely bring Mary’s child safely into the world. A prayer written by the dean of Westminster for the children of the queen’s grammar school was more a reminder of the curse of childbearing than of the blessing of a royal heir. “O most Righteous Lord God,” the children prayed morning and evening, “which, for the offence of the first woman, has threatened unto all women, a common, sharp, and inevitable malediction, and hath enjoined them that they should conceive in sin, and, being conceived, should be
subject to many and grievous torments, and finally, be delivered with the danger and jeopardy of their lives, we beseech thee ... to assuage thine anger for a while.”
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The Protestants, who took no pleasure in the prospective birth of a Catholic heir, prayed more concisely. “God turn the heart of Queen Mary from idolatry, or else shorten her days.”
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The object of these earnest entreaties was reported to be in radiantly good health. “The queen is in excellent health and three months with child,” one of the Spaniards wrote in mid-November. “She is fatter and has a better color than when she was married, a sign that she is happier, and indeed she is said to be very happy.”
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Her stomach was already visibly distended, and none of her dresses fit her. When she appeared at the opening of Parliament “her belly was laid out, that all men might see that she was with child.”
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At court the mood of reconciliation and rejoicing continued. On the day the queen’s quickening was celebrated there was a masque of “six Hercules or men of war coming from the sea,” who danced with mariners bearing torches. The six Hercules wore helmets made like griffons’ heads decorated with figures of a three-headed Cerberus. Lions’ faces adorned the breasts and backs of their costumes, which were lavishly gilded and silvered.
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The masque was presented at the queen’s expense, but Philip, not to be outdone, arranged a round of Spanish cane play, designed as a major court spectacle. The tournament was planned on the scale of Henry VIII’s athletic displays, with more than sixty knights on the field, each of them splendidly turned out in matched liveries of green and blue and yellow silk trimmed in silver and gold. Philip had given Mary’s ladies and gentlewomen dozens of yards of crimson and purple velvet and cloth of gold and silver for new dresses, and Mary sat among them in her brocades and jewels, smiling and holding the prizes she would award to the winners. Philip, who rode with Don Diego de Cordova’s band in purple and silver, performed creditably, though rain and the open ridicule of the English spoiled the triumph of the winning band.
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Many months later a shady figure named Lewkner, a purveyor of cards and dice to the court, told the queen’s examiners that only chance had saved Philip and his companions from assault during the cane play. According to Lewkner, some three hundred English guardsmen and others were sworn to kill Mary and all the Spaniards on a prearranged signal during the third round of cane play. Because of the rain the third round was called off, and the plan was thwarted.
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Philip, Pole informed the pope, now treated Mary with all the deference of a son, but his habitual affability had begun to wear thin.
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He had gone out of his way to please everyone, including the queen; he had disproved all the rumors of Spanish domination; he had fulfilled his primary obligation of begetting an heir. Why then hadn’t he been crowned king? In the feudal law of England a man who married an heiress was
confirmed in his possession of his wife’s lands when their first child was born. Mary was pregnant. He saw no reason to delay the coronation any longer.

Certainly the people were on his side. When he and Mary rode to the opening of Parliament, he on horseback and she in an open litter “to expose her to the public view,” all the voices from the crowd were full of approbation. “Oh! how handsome the king is!” “Oh! how kind and gentle he looks!” “Oh! what a good husband he is! How honorably and lovingly he treats the queen!” The Savoyard ambassador heard these exclamations and recorded them, along with the revealing monologue of an old woman who watched the king and queen walk from the church where they heard mass to the Parliament house. “An evil death to the traitors who said our king was misshapen!” she cried out. “Look at him! He is as fair as an angel! And I hear that he is good, holy and pious. God save him and bless us!”
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Crowned or not, all who favored the imperial position saw Philip moving into unchallenged pre-eminence in the government. When Paget was in Brussels in November he outlined to the emperor his view of Philip’s role. The Council was so out of hand that the country was “now governed by such a crowd that it was much more like a republic” than a monarchy; Philip should choose a half dozen of the best men in the Council—by which Paget meant himself and his allies, with Gardiner excluded—and let them rule while he “took his sword in hand, grew hardened to the heat and cold of campaigning,” and got on with the work of “striking terror into his foes.” Paget’s scenario would remove the hindrance of Mary’s authority while placing the Council under limited obligation to a king absent on campaign. The emperor agreed with Paget up to a point, admitting that it had been “the object of the marriage” that Philip take over the government, but he saw clearly that Mary should retain the appearance of power. Philip’s goal, his father said, “should be so to act that while he in reality does everything, the initiative should always seem to proceed from the queen and her Council.”
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No one was more pleased than Charles V at the news of the queen’s pregnancy. His son was at the head of affairs in England, the papal legate was about to reunite the country with the church, and on top of this the queen would soon give birth to a Catholic heir. When the English ambassador Mason had an audience with the emperor in November he found him in remarkably good health. He was sitting at a table, looking cheerful and “as lively as I have not of long time seen the like lustiness in him,” Mason wrote. His face, usually pale and puffy, was ruddy and firmer in its contours, and his limbs seemed less sluggish despite a recent bad attack of gout. He sat forward eagerly, and asked the ambassador for the latest information from the English court.

“How goeth my daughter’s belly forward?”

“Sir,” Mason answered, “I have from herself nothing to say therein, for she will not confess the matter till it be proved unto her face; but by others I understand, to my great joy and comfort, that her garments wax very strait.”

“I never doubted of the matter,” the emperor went on, “but that God for her had wrought so many miracles, would make the same perfect by assisting of nature to his good and most desired work.” And since God was arranging all, he would doubtless arrange the child’s sex to greatest advantage. “I warrant it shall be a man child,” Charles observed.

“Be it man or be it woman,” the ambassador said judiciously, “welcome shall it be, for by that shall we at the least come to some certainty to whom God shall appoint, by succession, the government of our estate.” As long as she remained childless there was grave anxiety in the kingdom, Mason added. “It maketh all good men to tremble to think the queen’s highness must die, with whom, dying without fruit, the realm were as good also to die.”

But the emperor was so sanguine at that moment he saw no reason for alarm on this or any other grounds. “Doubt not God will provide both with fruit and otherwise,” he told Mason, “so as I trust to see, yet, that realm to return to a great piece of that surety and estimation that I have in my time seen it in.”
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His optimism showed no signs of waning when, a week later, he met with Paget. The good reports out of England were “so pleasant unto him,” Paget wrote to the Council, “as, if he had been half dead, yet they should have been enough to have revived him

again.”
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In December and January the first joyous reaction to Mary’s expectant state gave way to greater concern for the security of her throne and government as the time for the birth approached. Philip was looking forward to taking part in the war against the French as soon as the winter weather ended, and he did not mean to wait until Mary’s child was born before he left. His letters to his father were full of military plans. “I must confess that for some years past I have been desirous of leading a campaign,” he told him, “and I would like it to be as soon as possible. It will be my first campaign, my first opportunity of acquiring or losing prestige; all eyes will be fixed on me.”
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Mary was alarmed, and by mid-January her fears had helped to make her ill. Almost certainly she expected a difficult childbirth, and wanted her husband to be at hand when her time came. By early February she was “very melancholy,” overwhelmed by fear of rebellion in support of Elizabeth or Courtenay, and by the unceasing opposition of the Protestants. Though it was seldom expressed, the possibility that the queen might not survive her pregnancy was never far from the minds of her councilors, and as her spirits sank their disquiet increased.

The most immediate cause of their concern were the Protestants. They were a minority in the population—very likely a small minority—but they were fiercely committed to their various creeds. The recent official reunion of England with Rome appeared to make them more determined in their opposition, and their religious differences with the crown were inevitably bound up with political opposition in a way that made them by far the most dangerous group in the country. They were never a coherent body. They held widely varied doctrines and, once they left England to form colonies on the continent, they fought bitterly among themselves. But to Mary and her councilors they represented a single, organized threat to the royal and clerical powers, a conspicuous witness to the perilous security of the queen’s government. They mocked the throne. They had to be silenced.

The opposition took many forms. Small congregations of like-minded believers met together in cellars, in ruined churches, in cemeteries, led in worship by a minister or spiritual guide. Individuals proclaimed themselves to be religious leaders and attracted followers or, like Anne Bokkas, who called herself “the Light of the Faith,” were seized and committed to prison.
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Still others seemed to confound worship with violent attacks on their Catholic neighbors, the clergy, and the queen herself. In a village near London a man spoke out in favor of the mass as he walked in the street; the servant of a Protestant gentleman overheard his remark, stopped him, and stabbed him twice with his dagger.
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In Essex an empty church was burned so that no mass could be celebrated there, and in Suffolk, arsonists set fire to another church “with the entire congregation that was hearing mass inside.”
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Since the start of Mary’s reign every stage in the return to the old faith had met with ridicule and sabotage. In the spring of 1554 Easter was observed in many London parishes with the full restoration of the time-honored traditions—creeping to the cross on Good Friday, carrying the palms on Palm Sunday—and the royal arms and scriptural verses painted on the rood-lofts were washed out or covered over. The sacrament was hung or set on the altar, and at St. Paul’s, in accordance with old custom, it was laid in a sepulchre at evensong on Good Friday where it was to remain until Easter morning. At high mass on Sunday it was to be taken out of the tomb with the choir bursting into song with the words of the angel at Jesus’ tomb, “He is risen, he is not here.” Sometime between Friday evensong and Sunday mass the host was stolen, and when the climactic moment came the joyous words of the choir’s anthem were disconcertingly true. The host was not there, which led to great embarrassment and some laughter until the priest supplied another in its stead. As soon as the story came out a ballad was printed telling how the God of the papists had been stolen and lost, and a new one put in his place.
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Re
wards offered for the identities of the thief and ballad-maker produced no response, but the example was widely imitated. In May a joiner named John Street tried to take the sacrament out of a priest’s hands in Smithfield. Onlookers came to the priest’s defense, and Street was taken to Newgate. There, the chronicler added, “he feigned himself mad.”
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