Mary Tudor (28 page)

The tomb of Mary and Elizabeth at Westminster Abbey:
ELIZABETH’S BODY WAS MOVED HERE BY JAMES I, THREE YEARS AFTER HER DEATH, BUT MARY’S PRESENCE IS BARELY ACKNOWLEDGED
.
(photo credit 1.20)

O
N JUNE 9, 1549, THE DAY THE FIRST ENGLISH PRAYER BOOK
became law, Mary celebrated Latin Mass in her chapel at Kenninghall amid incense, candles, and the chiming of bells. In doing so she publicly signaled her opposition to the religious changes and defied Edward’s authority as king. The Privy Council responded swiftly. In a letter dated June 16, Mary was given “advice to be conformable and obedient” to the law: Mass was no longer to be celebrated in her house. Her comptroller, Robert Rochester, and her chaplain, Dr. John Hopton, were summoned to court to receive further instructions.
¹

A week later, addressing Somerset and the rest of Edward’s Council, Mary responded directly to their charges:

She would not change her practices and would obey only her father’s laws, and she trusted that the Council would “no more to trouble and unquiet” her with “matters touching her conscience.” She excused from obedience the two men whose presence the Council had
demanded: Hopton because of his ill health, Rochester because “the chief charge of my house resteth upon his travails.”
²
In a subsequent letter to Somerset and the Privy Council, she expressed her anger and disappointment: “For my part I assure you all, that since the King my father, your late master and very good Lord died I never took you for other than my friends; but in this it appeareth co[n]trary.”
³

Days later, Lord Rich, the lord chancellor, and Sir William Petre, the first secretary, were sent to visit Mary at Kenninghall. Their brief was to challenge the points she had made in her previous letter, to induce her to comply with the new regulations, and to make her servants aware of the danger of disobeying the law.
⁴
In their “Remembrance for certain matters appointed by the Council to be declared to Dr Hopton to the Lady Mary’s Grace for Answer to her former letter,” the Privy Council rebuffed her objections point by point, yet Mary remained immovable and resistant to any such pressure.
⁵
She was determined to defend her servants’ rights to the free practice of their religion. She described her staff as “worthy people, ready to serve their King after their God to the whole extent of their power”; they were “as her own kin” whom she would stand by. When Rochester and Hopton were instructed that they must persuade their mistress to conform, they explained that they would not and could not. Rochester protested that “it was nowise suitable that a servant should act otherwise than in obedience to his mistress’s orders, and discharge of his domestic duties,” while Hopton declared that “he was the Lady Mary’s servant and obeyed her orders in her own house.”
⁶

As in years before, Mary gave the emperor a powerful hold over English politics, with the threat of war hanging over the country.
⁷
Sir William Paget was to be sent to the imperial court to “renew and make fast the amity with the Emperor” and make a formal proposition of marriage for Mary and the Infante Dom Luis of Portugal, the emperor’s brother-in-law and a longtime suitor for Mary’s hand. Rich and Petre were to ask Mary to draft, in her own hand, a letter of recommendation introducing William Paget to ensure that he gained the emperor’s favor. Mary took the opportunity to defend her household. She would write the letter, but if the councillors spoke to her servants as they had threatened, she would add an account to the emperor of how she was being treated in religious matters.
⁸
The commissioners
departed with “soft words having made no declaration or inhibition to her servants.”
⁹

When Paget arrived at the imperial court in late July, Charles expressed “great astonishment” at the pressure that had been put on Mary to accept the changes in religion. He stressed that, even if she were inclined to accept the reforms, he would do his “utmost to dissuade her, our close relative; for we and those to our blood would grieve exceedingly if she were to change.” He repeated his request for an assurance “in writing or otherwise, that she should not be included in the regulations made by Parliament about religion or be kept in suspense on the matter.”
¹⁰

THE DAY AFTER
the Prayer Book was introduced at Sampford Courtenay in Devon, local villagers petitioned the priest to defy the government. As John Hooker described it in his contemporary account of the rebellion, the priest “yielded to their wills and forthwith ravessheth [clothed] himself in his old popish attire and sayeth mass and all such services as in times past accustomed.”
¹¹
The news spread; a considerable force of Cornishmen angry at the religious changes gathered at Clyst St. Mary near Exeter. “We will,” the manifesto of the western rebels demanded, “have the mass in Latin, as was before”; “we will have holy bread and holy water made every Sunday, psalms and ashes at the times accustomed, images set up again in every church, and all other ancient, old ceremonies used heretofore by our mother the Holy Church.” The rebels insisted that the Act of Six Articles of 1539 be reintroduced until Edward came of age and described the new Prayer Book as a “Christmas game.”
¹²

There was violence too in Hertfordshire, Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk, as the rural poor protested against the economic hardships brought about by Somerset’s policy of land enclosure. Fences were pulled down and deer killed, and chaos engulfed the countryside. In Norfolk, rebels led by Robert Kett called for all bondmen to be free and emphasized that Thomas Howard, the third Duke of Norfolk, who had been imprisoned in 1547, “had used much more extremity than his Ancestors did towards them.” Since many of the rebellions occurred in East Anglia, near Mary’s estates, suspicion naturally fell on Mary.

On July 18, the Council warned her that certain of her servants were reported to be “chief in these commotions.” One of her staff had been active among the rebels at Sampford Courtenay in Devon, and another, Thomas Poley, was declared to be “a captain of the worst sort assembled in Suffolk.”
¹³
Men spoke of her complicity and of her plan to overthrow the present rulers of England. In a letter to the secretary of state, William Cecil, Sir Thomas Smith disguised his accusations not only by writing in Latin but also by referring to Mary in the masculine form: “Marius and the Marians; the fear which torments me to the point of destruction.”
¹⁴

Mary replied immediately, denying all charges made against her. The uprisings, she countered, “no less offend me, than they do you and the rest of the Council.” As for her chaplain being at Sampford Courtenay, “I do not a little marvel; for, to my knowledge, I have not one chaplain in those parts.” Poley had remained in her household, she claimed, and “was never doer amongst the commons, nor came in their company.”
¹⁵

IN THE MIDST
of rebellion and as the French king declared war, Mary was able to continue to flout the law. As Somerset noted, “whereas she used to have two masses said before, she has three said now since the prohibitions and with greater show.”
¹⁶
The government needed to maintain the imperial alliance, and it was considered prudent that for now, Mary be left alone to practice her religion. “If she does not wish to conform,” Somerset reasoned, “let her do as she pleases quietly and without scandal.”
¹⁷

Yet as Edward wrote to Mary in August:

Mary would receive corrective instruction. Such men would be chosen and sent to her, after which it was expected that her attitude would improve. Both the king and the lord protector clung to the hope that in time Mary would come to embrace the religious reforms.

Mary’s conscience had driven her into a position of direct opposition to the government. The girl who had been broken down and forced to yield her soul and the honor of her mother in fear of her father was now a mature woman of thirty-three. She was a landed magnate with a following of her own and the support of Emperor Charles V. Her brother, the king, was a child. She would not succumb again.

“M
ATTERS IN THIS REALM ARE RESTLESS FOR CHANGE,” VAN
der Delft wrote on September 15, 1549. Somerset’s handling of the rebellions and the continuing war with France and Scotland had lost him the confidence of the nobility and gentry. “The people are all in confusion, and with one common voice lament the present state of things.”
¹

It was the beginning of the end of Somerset’s protectorate. Dudley and the conservative nobles, Thomas Wriothesley, earl of Southampton, and Henry FitzAlan, earl of Arundel, were plotting against him and the country was drawing close to civil war. Matters came to a head on Saturday, October 5, when Somerset issued a proclamation commanding men to come to Hampton Court “in most defensible array” with harness and weapons, to defend the king against “a most dangerous conspiracy.”
²
Dudley and his supporters immediately took up arms riding through the city, their retinues following behind “attending upon them in new liveries to the great wondering of many.”
³
Letters were sent to other members of the nobility across the country, ordering them to ignore Somerset’s proclamation and repair to London armed. Somerset moved Edward to Windsor as chaos engulfed the capital. Four days later, faced with overwhelming opposition among the ruling elite, Somerset surrendered. On October 14, he was arrested and sent to the Tower, charged with treason.