Mary Tudor (31 page)

BOOK: Mary Tudor

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None of this need have mattered in the long term, but thanks to the events that took place between May and July 1555, the regime suddenly lost momentum. On 30 April there was a false alarm, when:

… tidings came to London that the Queen’s Grace was delivered of a prince, so there was great ringing [of bells] through London and divers places. Te Deum laudamus sung, but the morrow it was turned otherwise, to the pleasure of God …
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The royal physicians were all at sea, obstetrics at that time being largely a matter of guesswork and experience. By mid-May they were saying that it could be any day, but Mary herself did not expect to give birth until early June. The uncertainty had a paralysing effect upon the Franco-Imperial peace negotiations that were going on at La Marque. The birth of an heir to the English throne would have given the Emperor an immense advantage, while if the queen and her child both died, the advantage would be to the French. On 30 May a number of blank letters were prepared, announcing the queen’s safe delivery, and the following day signs of impending labour were reported. The physicians adroitly shifted their predicted birth date to 6 June. The day came – and went. In the bed chamber a cradle stood ready, ‘very sumptuously and gorgeously trimmed’, and a team of rockers, nurses and other domestic servants were prepared to do their offices. Still nothing happened, and scandalous rumours began to multiply. The queen was not really pregnant at all, but seriously ill – some said dead. The whole seclusion was a charade, a Spanish plot to pass off another infant as the queen’s. On 11 June, we are told, a certain Isobel Malt was secretly approached by Lord North to surrender her newborn son – on generous terms. The lady apparently refused.
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The stakes were high. Michieli believed that if a prince were born, Philip’s whole relationship with Mary and with the English council would be transformed, and he would no longer be ‘like an alien’ in the realm. Some apprehensive Englishmen thought the same: ‘his father will bring into this realm his own nation, and put out the English nation’. In other words the marriage treaty would count for nothing. What Philip thought about all this fuss, and its immense implications for him, we do not know. He remained at Hampton Court, but whether he spent any time in his wife’s company is not recorded – probably not, given the strictness of the taboos on male intruders.

Mary herself remained obstinately hopeful, and wrote to her ambassador in Brussels, Sir John Mason, as late as the middle of July instructing him to deny rumours that her pregnancy was false.
^{^[282]}However, not even Mary could hope indefinitely. Even before she wrote to Mason, some of her council had given up, while as late as the 25th her women were still expectant. By the end of the month, the whole pathetic farce had collapsed, leaving Mary exhausted and distraught. Her first reaction on finally becoming convinced of her delusion was to blame the ‘lies and flattery’ with which she had been surrounded, but in fact it had been her own will that had driven the pretence on and made it virtually treasonable to share the doubts of French agents and heretics. No official pronouncement was made, but on 4 August the court moved to Oatlands, and the rockers and other nursery staff were dismissed.

Those who liked Mary – and they were numerous at all social levels – were deeply saddened. Protestants proclaimed a divine judgement on their persecutor, and politicians had to take stock of a new situation. No one knew (or knows now) whether this convincing phantom pregnancy had been the result of her own intense desires, or was a symptom of some serious illness.
^{^[283]}Although no physician could then have named it, it looks suspiciously like the onset of the cancer of the womb that was to kill her three years later. Mary recovered her health slowly, and refused to give up the hope of offspring in the future, but Philip and most of her council began to face the probability that she would never have a child. The immediate beneficiary of this was Elizabeth, who was released when the court moved to Oatlands, and she returned to her own establishment at Ashridge. Nothing had been said about the succession, but then it hardly needed to be.

MARY’S ‘PREGNANCY’

CONCERNING THE CHILDBED OF QUEEN MARY, AS IT WAS RUMOURED AMONG THE PEOPLE.

Long persuasion had been in England, with great expectation, for the space of half a year or more, that the Queen was conceived with child. This report was made by the Queen’s physicians, & other nigh about the court; so that divers were punished for saying the contrary. And commandment was given that in all churches supplication and prayers should be made for the Queen’s good delivery; the certificate whereof you may read before in the letter of the council sent to Bonner, p. 1405. And also the same moreover may appear by provision made before in the act of Parliament made for the child, p. 1410.

And now for somuch as in the beginning of this month of June about Whitsuntide, the time was thought to be nigh, that this young Master should come into the world, and that midwives, rockers, nurses, with a cradle & all, were prepared and in a readiness, suddenly upon what cause or occasion it is uncertain, a certain vain rumour was blown in London of the prosperous deliverance of the Queen and of the birth of the child. In so much that the bells were rung, bonfires and processions made, not only in the City of London, and in most other parts of the realm, but also in the town of Antwerp, guns were shot off upon the river by the English ships, and the mariners thereof rewarded with an hundred pistolettes or Italian crowns by the Lady Regent, who was the Queen of Hungary. Such great rejoicing and triumph was for the Queen’s delivery, & that there was a prince born. Yea, divers preachers, namely one, the parson of St. Anne within Aldersgate, after procession and Te Deum sung, took upon him to describe the proportion of the child, how fair, how beautiful, and great a prince it was, as the like had not been seen.

In the midst of this great ado there was a simple man (this I speake but upon information) dwelling within four miles of Berwick, that never had been before half way to London, which said concerning the bonfires made for Queen Mary’s child. Here is a joyful triumph, but at length it will not prove worth a mess of pottage, as indeed it came to pass. For in the end all proved clean contrary, and the joy and expectations of men were much deceived, for the people were certified that the Queen neither was as then delivered, nor after was in hope to have any child. At this time many talked diversely. Some said that this rumour of the Queen’s conception was spread for a policy; some other affirmed that she was deceived by a Tympanie
*
or some other like disease, to think herself with child, and was not. Some thought that she was with child, and that it did by some chance miscarry, or else that she was bewitched. But what was the truth thereof the Lord knoweth, to whom nothing is secret. One thing of mine own hearing and seeing I can not pass over unwitnessed.

There came to me, whom I did both hear and see, one Isobel Malt, a woman dwelling in Aldersgate Street, in Home Alley, not far from the house where this present book was printed, who before witness made this declaration unto us, that she being delivered of a manchild upon Whitsunday in the morning, which was the 11th day of June an.1555, there came to her the Lord North and another Lord to her unknown, dwelling then about Old Fish Street, demanding of her if she would part with her child, and would swear that she never knew nor had no such child. Which if she would, her son (they said) should be well provided for, she should take no care for it, with many other fair offers if she would part with the child …

[John Foxe,
Acts and Monuments
(1583), pp. 1596-7.]

*
A tumour.

Philip faced the most serious dilemma because now, at the age of twenty-eight, it looked as though he was locked into a sterile marriage of indefinite duration. Mary was thirty-nine, and might well live for another twenty or thirty years. He had one son, who was not particularly robust, and apparently no prospect of redrawing the dynastic map of northern Europe. For the time being such sobering thoughts were set aside. Once the queen was back on her feet, he had to respond to the urgent situation that had been brewing up in the Low Countries. His father’s health was deteriorating steadily, and Charles was less and less able to attend to business.
^{^[284]}The time had come for Charles to begin handing over his responsibilities to Philip – but for that purpose Philip needed to be physically present. Everyone had agreed that as long as there was a prospect of an heir in England, Philip’s place was in proximity to his wife. Now that had changed, and for a variety of reasons he was anxious to be off. On 26 August the royal couple ‘came riding from Westminster through London unto Tower Wharf’. They only went as far as Greenwich, and the object was clearly to demonstrate that Mary was not only alive, but fit to discharge business. Three days later Philip set off for Dover ‘with a great company’, which included a number of his English gentlemen, and Mary went to Greenwich again to see him off.
^{^[285]}There is no record of their parting, but it is reasonable to suppose that their emotions were very different.

MARY ALONE

Before he went, Philip had made arrangements to be kept in touch with English affairs by setting up a select council or council of state to act as a link between himself and the privy council.
^{^[286]}This was unprecedented in England, but familiar in Spain and other dominions accustomed to being ruled from a distance. The idea was that the select council would extract from the privy council whatever business they judged to be of interest to the king, and minute it to him in Latin. They would also discuss and correspond with him about issues of policy that he wished to keep confidential. The oddity of this arrangement, and the reason why it did not work as intended, was that it took no account of Mary. Greatly as she respected and admired her husband, Mary had no intention of allowing herself to be bypassed in this way, nor would her own advisers have tolerated it. It may be that she also discussed matters of state with the select council rather than the privy council, but there is no direct evidence of that.
^{^[287]}Consequently, although the select council worked effectively as a channel of communication, it had only the status of an informal advisory group in the government of England. If Philip had thought to increase his role in English government by manipulating it from a distance, then he miscalculated.

More successful was the surrogacy that Philip left to Reginald Pole. After several months of working with the cardinal, Philip’s opinion of him had improved, and he came to appreciate the relationship that Pole had established with Mary. Philip was well aware that his wife was in a fragile condition, both mentally and physically, after her ordeal during the summer, and he privately instructed Pole to care for her wellbeing, as far as he could. Her occasional emotional storms needed to be calmed; she needed to be discouraged from overworking; and above all she needed the support and consolation of his unwavering Catholic faith. When Philip left, it was with soothing reassurances of a speedy return, and he left a large part of his normal household in England. Whether he ever seriously intended to come back quickly may be doubted. When Parliament was summoned on 3 September, it was expected that he would be present at the opening, but well before it actually assembled on 21 October he had sent his apologies. On 25 October, in an emotional and tearful ceremony in Brussels, Mary of Hungary stood down as regent of the Low Countries, and Charles handed over the sovereignty of the seventeen provinces to his son.
^{^[288]}This can hardly have come as a surprise to Philip, and the elaborate preparations almost certainly went back before his actual arrival at the beginning of September. In other words, the king had known perfectly well that he was unlikely to be back in the foreseeable future, but did not wish to add to Mary’s distress by being frank about it. In December the remainder of his household was quietly withdrawn, and Mary, we are told, was very upset. Not only did Philip have no intention of returning in the immediate future, but he had lied to her.

England was a depressing place in the autumn of 1555. The queen was in low spirits, both as a result of the failure of her pregnancy and because of her husband’s absence. The late summer weather was appalling and the harvest failed. The Parliament had been called to grant a subsidy, and soon revealed itself to be in a difficult mood.
^{^[289]}The religious persecution ground relentlessly on. Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer, burned at Oxford in October, were only the most prominent of the many victims. And on 14 November Stephen Gardiner, lord chancellor and Bishop of Winchester, died after a short illness.