Mary Tudor (58 page)

While Mary lay dying, the court began to move to Hatfield, as “many personages of the kingdom flocked to the house of ‘milady’ Elizabeth, the crowd constantly increasing with great frequency.”
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J
UST BEFORE MIDNIGHT ON WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1557, MARY
received the last rites in her chamber at St. James’s Palace. A few hours later, between five and six in the morning, she died. She was forty-two.

During her last few days, the celebration of Mass had been at the center of her conscious existence, and as dawn broke on Thursday morning, she had lifted her eyes at the Elevation of the Host for the final time. According to one later account, she had “comforted those of them that grieved about her, she told them what good dreams she had, seeing many little children, like Angels playing before her, singing pleasing notes.”
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Hours later, the lord chancellor, Nicholas Heath, announced to Parliament that Mary was dead. Any sorrow that might have been felt was quickly overshadowed by rejoicing for the accession of a new queen.

At Whitehall, Elizabeth was formally proclaimed as heralds rode out to the cross at Cheapside to make the announcement before the lord mayor and aldermen of the city.
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By midafternoon, “all the churches in London did ring, and at night did make bonfires and set tables in the street, and did eat and drink and made merry for the new Queen Elizabeth, Queen Mary[’s] sister.”
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Just six hours after Mary’s death, Elizabeth was proclaimed queen.

Across the river at Lambeth Palace, Cardinal Pole also lay dying. The news of the queen’s passing appeared to hurry his own demise. For nearly a quarter of an hour he remained silent, absorbing what he had just heard; “though his spirit was great, the blow nevertheless having entered his flesh, brought on the paroxysm earlier, and with
more intense cold.” Turning to Ludovico Priuli and Thomas Goldwell, bishop of St. Asaph, two of his closest attendants, he remarked on the symmetry, the “great conformity,” as he described it, of their lives. She, like himself, “had been harassed during many years for one and the same cause, and afterwards, when it pleased God to raise her to the throne, he had greatly participated in all her other troubles entailed by that elevation.”
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Just twelve hours after Mary’s passing, he too died, unreconciled with and condemned by the pope.

A messenger was sent to Philip with news of his wife’s death. Just weeks before, both his father, the Emperor Charles V, and his aunt Margaret of Flanders, the regent of the Netherlands, had also died. “You may imagine what a state I am in,” he wrote to his sister in Spain; “it seems to me that everything is being taken from me at once.” Of Mary he added, “May God have received her in His glory! I felt a reasonable regret for her death. I shall miss her, even on this account.”
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Mary remained second to Habsburg strategic interests; Philip’s comments were made in the middle of a paragraph detailing progress in the peace negotiations at Cercamp. He instructed Feria to secure the jewels that Mary had bequeathed him in her will and to represent him with suitable dignity at her obsequies.

WITHIN HOURS
of Mary’s death, the preparation of her body began. Her heart and bowels were removed, her belly opened and filled with preservative herbs and spices. She was placed in a lead coffin and then a wooden chest. For the next three weeks, her corpse lay in state in the Privy Chamber of St. James’s Palace, which had been hung with black cloth and adorned with the royal arms. The coffin stood upon trestles, covered with a pall of rich cloth of gold. Every day her gentlewomen prayed about the coffin and heard Masses, and through the night her hearse was illuminated with burning candles.

In life Mary had received visitors in her Privy Chamber under the cloth of estate; now, in death, mourners looked upon her body and paid their respects. Though dead, Mary would remain in possession of sovereignty until her burial some weeks later. As was customary during the weeks of transition, a lifelike, life-size wooden effigy dressed in the coronation robes and bearing the orb and scepter acted in place of the
dead monarch. A fifteenth-century guide, “What Shall Be Done on the Demise of a King Anointed,” gave instructions to “make an image like him clothed in a surcoat, with a mantel of estate, the laces goodly lying on his belly, his sceptre in his hand, and a crown on his head, and so carry him in a chair open, with lights and banners, accompanied with lords and estates as the council can best devise.”
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Around it the routines of court life continued. As Feria noted, “the house is served exactly as it was before.” Food was placed on the royal table; gentleman ushers officiated with their white wands; guards stood at doors of the chamber within which sat the five-foot-five wooden figure.
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The marquess of Winchester, the most senior of Mary’s surviving councillors, was put in charge of the funeral arrangements. The ceremony, conducted according to “King Henry VIII’s funeral book,” was to be traditional, Catholic, and expensive.
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Preparations continued for nearly a month as the dead queen remained in state at St. James’s. Finally, on December 10, with the arrangements made and mourning clothes and funeral accoutrements prepared, a solemn procession of black-robed heralds, lords, ladies, and household officers entered the privy apartments. Mary’s coffin was held aloft and carried to the Chapel Royal, where the high altar had been trimmed with purple velvet. At three in the afternoon lords and ladies assembled in the Presence Chamber and Great Chamber along with the officers of the household. The bishops went into the Presence Chamber, censed the coffin, and said prayers. The coffin, borne under a canopy of purple velvet, was then taken up by eight gentlemen and in ordered procession made its way to the chapel.

Three days later, the funeral cortege made its final journey to Westminster Abbey. Banners of the English royal arms led the king and queen’s household officers, who, dressed in black, marched two by two in rank order. Behind them five heralds bore the masculine regalia of sovereignty—the banner of English royal arms embroidered with gold, the royal helmet, the royal shield, the royal sword, and the coat of armor, as if a king were being buried. A wheeled chariot bearing Mary’s coffin followed, accompanied by the painted effigy “adorned with crimson velvet and her crown on her head, her sceptre in her hand and many goodly rings on her fingers.”
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At each corner of the funeral chariot a herald on horseback bore a banner of the four English
royal saints. After the chariot followed the chief mourner, Margaret Douglas, countess of Lennox, and Mary’s ladies-in-waiting, all in black robes, attending her in death as they had in life.
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The procession halted at the great door of the abbey, where it was met by four bishops and an abbot, who censed the coffin before it and the effigy were taken inside. There Mary’s body laid overnight in the hearse that had been specially built to receive it, watched over by a hundred gentlemen in mourning clothes and the queen’s guard, each holding burning torches.
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The next morning, the funeral Mass was sung and John White, bishop of Winchester, preached the funeral sermon.
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He had been present at Mary’s death and related how “if angels were mortal, I would rather liken this her departure to the death of an angel, than of a mortal creature.” He then delivered an oration, praising Mary’s virtues:

He continued:

The bishop said little about Mary’s religious policies but defended her sincere faith. “I verily believe, the poorest creature in all this city feared not God more than she did.”
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It was a powerful speech based on two verses from Ecclesiastes: “I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living, which are yet alive” and “for a living dog is better than a dead lion.” He sought to disguise his words with apparently harmless analogies, but his meaning was clear: a dead Mary was better than a living Elizabeth. After this encomium, the best that White could say of Elizabeth was that she was royal like Mary and held the realm “by the like title and right.” He concluded by “wishing her a prosperous reign in peace and tranquillity”—“if it be God’s will.”
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The next day the bishop was informed that “for such offences as he committed in his sermon at the funeral of the late Queen,” he was to be confined to his house at Elizabeth’s pleasure.
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At the offertory of the Mass that followed, the regalia was offered at the altar, one by one, and the queen’s coat of armor, sword, shield, and banner of arms returned symbolically to God. The effigy and other tokens of royalty were removed from the coffin, which was carried to the chapel of Mary’s grandfather Henry VII. A vault had been opened in the north aisle of Henry VII’s chapel into which the coffin was lowered. After earth had been cast on top, Mary’s household officers broke their white staffs of office and threw them into the grave. The heralds cried, “The queen is dead, long live the queen!” and people tore down the banners and cloth hangings for souvenirs. With trumpets blowing, the mourners and peers, officiating clergy, and Mary’s officers all departed to dine at the abbot of Westminster’s lodging, the last act of the regime.
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