Mary Tudor (20 page)

[Undated but mid-July 1550.
Calendar of State Papers, Spanish
, ix, pp. 124-35. Original (French) Brussels R. A. Prov. 13.]

*
Cornille Scepperus, Sieur d’Eecke.

†
Stansgate Abbey, six miles from Maldon by water, and twelve by road.

‡ Robert Rochester.

§
Francois Van der Delft.

**
Imperial representatives carefully used this form of address, because in principle they recognised Mary as the ruler rather than Edward.

‡‡
Not identified. The Flemish form of an English name. Rochester had used him as an intermediary with Dubois.

The attitudes of Mary’s supporters and opponents were not necessarily incompatible: even her supporters needed her in the country to ensure the succession. Within weeks the abortive flight was being discussed in diplomatic circles all over Western Europe. The French ambassador claimed to have learned from English sources that Charles’ intention had been to have married Mary to his son Philip, the prince of Spain, and then to have pressed her claim to the English throne on the grounds of Edward’s illegitimacy.
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This was probably an accurate reading of the ambition of Mary of Hungary, but a long way from any feasible Imperial policy, even if the escape had succeeded. Towards the end of August Mary wrote to Scheyfve, the new Imperial ambassador, mendaciously denying the whole adventure, and claiming that the council was putting such reports about as a pretext for taking further action against her.

Such action as was taken was low key, and seems to have been intended mainly to demonstrate to anyone who was watching the extent of her dependence upon a foreign power. Two of her chaplains were indicted for saying mass, presumably outside of the house where she was resident. Mary at once complained to Scheyfve, and on 4 September Charles instructed his ambassador again to demand unconditional assurances – with menaces. In the circumstance this was little more than an empty gesture and, having achieved their objective, the council allowed the matter to drop.

A brief truce then ensued, which lasted until December. However, Mary was then confronted by a new phenomenon. The Duke of Somerset had dealt with her sympathetically if condescendingly, but the Earl of Warwick was prepared to be more ruthless, and this can be directly linked to the steady development of the king’s own religious convictions. Edward was now thirteen, and full of adolescent assurance and self-confidence. He was beginning to find his sister’s conscience as offensive as she was finding the actions of his ministers. On 1 December what could easily have been another routine skirmish developed over a further indictment of two of the princess’s chaplains, whom she claimed were covered by her immunity. This took a different course from the earlier indictment, however, firstly because the council wrote on Christmas Day a long letter to Mary that was more than half Protestant sermon, but which also pointed out that her immunity was a private matter, covering only masses said within the household, and in her presence. The alleged offences had been committed outside the household, and when she was not there.
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Secondly, the king intervened in person. On 24 January he wrote, upbraiding her for her errors:

… in our state it shall miscontent us to permit you, so great a subject, not to keep our laws. Your nearness to us in blood, your greatness in estate [and] the condition of this time, maketh your fault the greater.
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The threat was implied rather than explicit, but it landed a heavy punch. Mary’s case had always rested upon the assertion that she was dealing with ministers, and that the king (‘that tender lamb’), even if he knew what was being done in his name, was far too young to appreciate it. When he came to full years, he might command her, but not before. Now for the first time she was faced with unequivocal proof – the letter was written partly in his own hand – that she was likely to find the adult Edward as uncongenial as his minority council.

Mary was deeply distressed by this prospect, so much so that (according to her own account) she became too ill to write a full reply. The conflict that now developed was not about jurisdiction, or about the definition of the king’s power, but about faith. To Mary the mass and its traditional accompaniments represented true religion, which no one had any right to alter. She had supported her father’s supremacy, not because she believed that he was right, but because he had safeguarded these fundamentals. If Edward would do the same she would obey him, but if not, not. To Edward, on the other hand, the mass was blasphemous idolatry – an abuse of the word of God – and his father had been woefully misled. Between these two iron-shod positions of conscience no compromise was possible, and if Edward had lived to achieve his majority his sister might well have found herself in prison. Meanwhile, she ceased to profess her willingness to obey him when he came of age, but continued, as best she could, to take refuge behind the circumstances of his minority.

Meanwhile, the council continued to parade its routine arguments. Her immunity covered only herself and her chamber servants, not her household at large, and certainly not anyone else. In response she tried to take refuge in implying that the king’s words were not really his own, and even that he had no authority at all. She was wisely warned off this line of argument by Scheyfve, who saw that it could be construed as treason, but it is a measure of her disturbed state of mind that she even contemplated it.
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Inevitably, Scheyfve was soon as embroiled in this dispute as Van der Delft or Chapuys had been before. He helped her to write her letters (or thought that he did) and made endless and tedious protests to the council about the way in which she was being treated.

However, the situation was not entirely static. The Earl of Warwick now became prone to say that he and his colleagues were only doing the king’s bidding, and he pointed out meaningfully that whereas the ambassador enjoyed a licence to have mass said in his residence in London, no similar indulgence was extended to Sir Thomas Chamberlain, the English ambassador, in Brussels. Indeed an application for such had been treated with insulting contempt. The atmosphere became decidedly tense, but neither side wanted to be responsible for breaking off relations, and so the standoff continued.

On 15 March 1551 Mary was summoned to see her brother, an order that she could not possibly ignore. She made a grand entry to London, her entourage displaying rosaries and other symbols of the old faith, and told the king flatly that her faith was not to be constrained. He replied with equal candour that he was not interested in her faith, but only in her behaviour, and that disobedience to his laws would not be tolerated.
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One or two of her gentleman servants were imprisoned, and her officers were summoned before the council and ordered on their allegiance to secure her conformity. Even if they had been willing there was no way in which they could have achieved that – and in any case they were not willing.

There were rumours that conservative nobles were conspiring on Mary’s behalf, and at the end of March a crisis seemed to be about to break. However, at the last moment both sides backed off. Cranmer and Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London, advised the council that although to license sin was also sinful, ‘to suffer and wink … for a time might be borne’. At the same time the Emperor, casting an anxious eye over his deteriorating relations with France, decided that he would postpone making an enemy of the English, and instructed Scheyfve that he should advise the princess to be satisfied with her private licence, and not to press for public concessions.
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This damped down the fire for a few months, but at the beginning of August it sprang up brightly again – not this time through any action of Mary’s, but because the Earl of Warwick had decided to grasp the nettle. At that point the Emperor was clearly hamstrung by the threat of renewed war with France, and Warwick (who had been lord president of the council since February 1550, but declined to take the title of protector) decided that the time had come to take issue with his conservative opponents.
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The Duke of Somerset, unreconciled to his own marginalisation, had apparently been conspiring with them, and Mary’s household was increasing in importance as a symbolic focus of resistance. Moreover the young king was becoming steadily more querulous about this blot on the godliness of his government. It was necessary to destroy such a centre of defiance, and on 9 August the council decided to withdraw the princess’s mass licence altogether. At the same time they threatened Scheyfve with the termination of his own licence, because Chamberlain had again been refused a reciprocal arrangement in the Low Countries.

On 14 August Rochester, Englefield and Waldegrave were again summoned before the council and ordered to convey the unwelcome tidings to Mary. She refused to listen, and instead sent her officers back to London with a personal letter to the king. In addition to repeating a number of familiar arguments, this made it clear that she simply refused to acknowledge any issue of law or public authority in the dispute. It was a quarrel between her private conscience and the private consciences of the Earl of Warwick and his cronies. What was in her eyes a bad law was no law at all, and there was no duty to obey it.
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When they refused to act as the council’s messengers a second time, the officers were imprisoned for contempt. That was the easy bit. Policing Mary’s household while leaving her at liberty was an altogether more challenging prospect, and since the council had no desire to provoke another conservative demonstration by summoning her to London, they sent a commission to visit her at Copthall.

This mission, which consisted of the lord chancellor, Lord Rich, Sir Anthony Wingfield and Sir William Petre, arrived on 29 August. The king’s patience, they declared, was exhausted, and henceforth no service might be said in any of her houses other than that authorised by law. Mary, while making a great show of humility when presented with Edward’s letters, treated his representatives with contempt. They had, she said, no valid authority for their actions, and most of them were simply her father’s creatures.
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In a sense that was true, but their authority was as great as that of any minority government could be – and her assertion was both perilous and untrue. It had been foolish, she went on, to seek to control her through her officers, when those were of her own free choosing. Moreover, it was ridiculous to represent the king as being old enough to make decisions in matters of religion, while denying it in respect of the government in general.

So far the honours had been about even, but the princess then turned from reason to histrionics. She would report them to the Emperor’s ambassador. ‘I am sickly,’ she went on, ‘and yet will not die willingly … but if I chance to die I will protest openly that you of the council be the causes of my death …’ They gave her fair words, but their deeds were unfriendly. She wanted her officers back, because she had never been brought up to count loaves, and so on. As they rode away, having accomplished nothing, she leaned out of her window and shouted after them, ‘I pray God to send you to do well in your souls and bodies, for some of you have but weak bodies ...’ It had been a performance of great panache, but little dignity, and the councillors might well have wondered whether they were dealing with a madwoman.
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A VISIT FROM THE COUNCIL, 1551

A NOTE OF THE REPORTE OF THE MESSAGE DONE TO THE LADYE MARYES GRACE BY US, THE LORD RICHE LORD CHANCELLOR, SIR ANTHONY WINGFELD, KNIGHT [COMPTROLLER OF THE HOUSEHOLD] AND SIR WILLIAM PETER, KNIGHT [PRINCIPAL SECRETARY] AND OF HER GRACE’s AUNSWERS TO THE SAME … THE XXIXTH OF AUGUST 1551.

First, having received commaundement and instruccions from the Kinges Majestie, we repaired to the sayd Lady Maryes howse at Copthall in Essex on Fryday laste, being the xxviiith of this instant, in the morning, where shortly after our cummyng, I the Lord Chauncellor, delyvred his majesties lettres unto her, whiche she received upon her knees, saying for thonour of the Kinges Majesties hand wherewith the said lettres were signed she would kysse the lettre and not for the mattier conteyned in them, for the mattier (sayed she) I take to procede not from his Majestie but from you of the Counsell.

In the reading of the lettre, which she did rede secretely to her self, she sayd thies wordes in our hearing, Ah! Good master Cecyll tooke muche payne here.’

When she had red the lettres we began to open the mattier of our instruccions unto her, and as I, the Lorde Chauncellor, began, she prayed me to be shorte, for (sayed she) I am not well at easse, and I will make you a short aunswer, notwithstanding that I have alredy declared and wrytten my mynde to his Majestie playnely with myn owne hande...

We tolde her further that the Kinges Majesties pleasure was we shuld also gyve strayte charge to her chaplains that none of them shuld presume to say any Masse or other Devyne Servyce then is sett forthe by the laves of the realme ... Hereunto her aunswer was this; first she protested that to the Kinges Majestie she was, ys and ever wolbe his Majesties moste humble and moste obedient subject and poore sister, and wold most willingly obey all his commaundementes in any thing (her conscyence saved); yea and would willingly and gladly suffer death to do his Majestie good, but rather than she will agre to use any other servyce than was used at the death of the late King her father, she would laye her hed on a block and suffer death; but (sayed she) I am unworthy to suffer death in so good a quarrel. When the Kinges Majestie (sayed she) shall come to such yeres that he may be able to judge thies thinges himself, hys Majestie shall fynde me redy to obey his orders in religion; but now in thies yeres, although he, good swete King, have more knowledge then any other of his yeres, yet it is not possible that he can be a judge in thies thinges... The payne of your lawes is but emprysonnment for a short tyme, and if they will refuse to saye Masse for feare of that emprisonnment, they may do therein as they will; but none of your nue Service (said she) shalbe used in my howse, and if any be sayd in it, I woll not tary in the howse ...