Mary Tudor (17 page)
Authors: Anna Whitelock
For Henry, to give Mary back her rights without terms was tantamount to submitting to the pope, to humbling himself before the emperor, and to climbing down in the eyes of his enemy, the king of France, and that he would never do.
MOST HUMBLE AND OBEDIENT DAUGHTER
Master Secretary
,
I would have been a suitor to you before this time, to have been a means for me to the King’s Grace, my father, to have obtained his Grace’s blessing and favour; but I perceived that no body durst speak for me, as long as that woman lived, which now is gone, whom I pray our Lord of his great mercy to forgive. Wherefore, now she is gone, I am the bolder to write to you, as she which taketh you for one of my chief friends. And therefore I desire you for the love of God to be a suitor for me to the King’s Grace, to have his blessing and licence to write unto his Grace, which shall be a great comfort to me, as God knoweth; who have you evermore in his holy keeping. Moreover I must desire you to accept mine evil writing. For I have not done so much this two year and more, nor could not have found the means to do it at this time, but my Lady Kingston’s being here
.
At Hunsdon, the 26th of May
.
By your loving friend
,
Marye.
1
A
FTER THE FALL OF ANNE BOLEYN, MARY HOPED SHE MIGHT REGAIN
her father’s favor. She had waited at Hunsdon to be summoned to court, but when no word came she wrote to Cromwell asking him to intercede with Henry now that “that woman” was dead.
Four days later, Mary wrote again, thanking him for leave to write to the king and assuring him that “you shall find me as obedient to the King’s Grace, as you can reasonably require of me.” She trusted that this would be enough to withdraw her father’s displeasure and permit her to “come into his presence.”
2
Cromwell had been enlisted as mediator between Henry and Mary as Jane Seymour pressed for reconciliation. The king, however, remained determined that Mary submit. The price of his restored favor would be her complete subjugation to his will.
On June 1, Mary addressed a letter to Henry directly. In “as humble and lowly a manner, as is possible for a child to use to her father,” she begged for forgiveness:
I beseech your Grace of your daily blessing, which is my chief desire in the world. And in the same humble ways [ac]knowledging all the offences that I have done … I pray your Grace, in the honour of God, and for your fatherly pity, to forgive me them; for the which I am sorry, as any creature living; and next unto God, I do and will submit me in and all things to your goodness and pleasure to do with me whatsoever shall please your grace.
She prayed God to send him a prince, “whereof,” she declared, “no creature living shall more rejoice or heartier pray for continually than I,” and signed herself “Your grace’s most humble and obedient daughter and handmaid, Mary.”
3
After she had been granted leave to write to him, Mary had assumed that her father had forgiven her and withdrawn his “dreadful displeasure.” Yet her letter met with no response. She had submitted to her father “next unto God,” but this was not enough. She wrote again, begging to receive some sign of his favor and to be called into his presence, but again there was no reply.
4
On the tenth she drafted another letter, this time sending a copy to Cromwell. In it she declared herself “most humbly prostrate before your noble feet, your most obedient subject and humble child, that hath not only repented her offences hitherto, but also decreed simply from henceforth and wholly next to Almighty God,
to put my state, continuance and living in your gracious mercy.”
5
As Mary added in her dispatch to Cromwell:
I trust you shall perceive that I have followed your advice and counsel, and will do in all things concerning my duty to the King’s Grace (God and my conscience not offended) for I take you for one of my chief friends, next unto his Grace and the Queen. Wherefore, I desire you, for the passion which Christ suffered for you and me, and as my very trust is in you, that you will find such means through your great wisdom, that I be not moved to agree to any further entry in this matter than I have done. But if I be put to any more (I am plain with you as with my great friends) my said conscience will in no ways suffer me to consent thereunto.
6
Cromwell’s letter does not survive, but his disapproval is clear from Mary’s reply. He had taken exception to her qualified response and, enclosing a draft for her guidance, instructed her to write again to the king and to send him a copy:
Good Master Secretary
,
I do thank you with all my heart, for the great pain and suit you have had for me, for the which I think myself very much bound to you. And whereas I do perceive by your letters, that you do mislike mine exception in my letter to the King’s Grace, I assure you, I did not mean as you do take it. For I do not mistrust that the King’s goodness will move me to do anything which should offend God and my conscience. But that which I did write was only by the reason of continual custom. For I have always used, both in writing and speaking, to except God in all things
.
Nevertheless, because you have exhorted me to write to his Grace again, and I cannot devise what I should write more but your own last copy, without adding or [di]minishing; therefore I do send you by this bearer, my servant, the same, word for word; and it is unsealed, because I cannot endure to write another copy
.
For the pain in my head and teeth hath troubled me so sore these two or three days and doth yet so continue, that I have very small rest, day or night
.
Your assured bounden loving friend during my life
,
Marye.
7
Mary copied Cromwell’s draft “word for word” and then addressed the king once more. Having begged “in my most humble and lowly manner” for his “daily blessing” and permission to come into his presence, she continued:
I have written twice unto your highness, trusting to have, by some gracious letters, token or message, perceived sensibly the mercy, clemency and pity of your Grace, and upon the operation of the same, at the last also to have attained the fruition of your most noble presence, which above all worldly things I desire: yet I have not obtained my said fervent and hearty desire, nor any piece of the same to my great and intolerable discomfort I am enforced, by the compulsion of nature, eftsones to cry unto your merciful ears, and most humbly prostrate before your feet
.
She signed off by petitioning for “some little spark of my humble suit and desire” and praying God
to preserve your Highness, with the Queen, and shortly to send you issue, which shall be gladder tidings to me than I can express in writing…. Your most humble and obedient daughter and handmaid, Marye.
8
The king’s response was direct and unequivocal. Within days he sent a delegation of councillors, headed by the duke of Norfolk, to visit Mary at Hunsdon to demand that she take the oath of allegiance and make a complete submission. The councillors condemned her for her earlier refusal to obey as a “monster in nature,” a freakish departure from the natural obedience of a daughter toward her father. Any other man,
they declared, would have sent her away, but, given Henry’s “gracious and divine nature,” he was willing to withhold his displeasure if Mary would now submit to him. Would she accept all the laws and statutes of the realm? Would she accept Henry as supreme head of the Church and repudiate the jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome? Would she acknowledge that her mother’s marriage was invalid and accept all the laws and statutes of the realm?
Her answer to each was no. She was willing to obey her father in all matters except those that injured her mother, her present honor, or her faith, and in this she was steadfast. Norfolk angrily declared that “so unnatural” was she to oppose the king’s will that “they could scarcely believe she was his bastard, and if she were their daughter, they would beat her and knock her head so hard against the wall that it made it as soft as a baked apple.” She was a traitoress and “should be punished.” They left, instructing Lady Shelton to keep her under constant surveillance, day and night, and to make sure she spoke to no one.
9
Cromwell had pledged that he would secure Mary’s submission, and he now feared for his own life. He confided to Chapuys that “he considered himself a dead man” for having represented Mary as “penitent and obedient.”
10
Writing to Mary, he chastised her over her position:
Knowing how diversely and contrarily you proceeded at the late being of his Majesty’s counsel with you, I am both ashamed of that I have said, and likewise afraid of that I have done; in so much that what the sequel thereof shall be God knoweth.
He continued:
Thus with your folly you undo yourself, and all that hath wished you good…. Wherefore, Madam, to be plain, as God is my witness … I think you the most obstinate and obdurate woman all things considered, that ever was, and one that so preserving, well deserveth the reward of malice in extremity of mischief, or at least that you be both repentant for your ingratitude and miserable unkindness, and ready to do all things that you be bound unto by your duty of allegiance.
He commanded her to sign the articles required and warned that if she refused he would “take leave” of her forever and desire her “never to write or make mean unto me hereafter. For I will never think you other than the most ungrateful, unnatural, and most obstinate person living, both to God and your most dear and benign father.”
11
Mary still refused. It was the very apogee of her resistance. She had become a traitor to the king and his laws. Henry now insisted that she should be treated as such, as should her allies.
IN JUNE, THE MARQUESS
of Exeter and Sir William Fitzwilliam were dismissed from the Privy Council as “suspected persons.” Weeks later, Sir Anthony Browne and Sir Francis Bryan, two gentlemen of the Privy Chamber, were arrested and interrogated over their support of Mary.
12
Henry believed that such individuals were encouraging the princess in her defiance.
13
The examinations of Browne and Bryan implicated Sir Nicholas Carew, who had been in correspondence with the princess, and Thomas Cheney and John Russell, both gentlemen of the Privy Chamber. Bryan deposed that the rest of his “fellows of the Privy Chamber” were rejoicing at the fall of Anne and advancing Mary’s claim should Jane Seymour fail to give Henry a son.
14
He claimed further that since the king’s divorce they had been working against Anne Boleyn, supporting Katherine and Mary, liaising with Charles V, and working in defense of the traditional religion.
15
They were all now placed in the Tower along with Lady Anne Hussey, the wife of Mary’s chamberlain.
The danger to Mary was now as great as it had been during the months before her mother’s death. According to Ralph Morice, Thomas Cranmer’s old secretary, Henry “fully purposed to send the lady Mary his daughter unto the Tower, and there to suffer as a subject, by cause she would not obey unto the laws of the realm in refusing the bishop of Rome’s authority and religion.”
16
Judges were commanded to proceed with a legal inquiry into Mary’s treachery and sentence her as willfully defiant of the king’s authority. Unwilling to use the legal system against her, they gave Mary one final chance. She was to be sent a document entitled “Lady Mary’s Submission,” detailing all points the king required her to agree to.
17
If she refused to sign those articles, legal proceedings would begin and she would be charged with treason.
Mary sent word to Chapuys, begging his counsel. He told her that “if the King persisted in his obstinacy, or she found evidence that her life was in danger, either by maltreatment or otherwise,” she should “consent to her father’s wish.” He assured her that this was what the emperor wanted and that “to save her life, on which depended the peace of the realm, and the redress of the great evils which prevail here, she must do everything and dissemble for some time.”