Mary Tudor (38 page)

At three that afternoon, as guns fired from the ramparts and bells rang from the churches all around, Mary departed the Tower for the coronation procession. The event, another tradition dating from the reign of Richard II, was an opportunity for Londoners to see their sovereign before the coronation the following day. First, the queen’s messengers rode out from the courtyard of the Tower, followed by trumpeters, esquires of the body, the knights of the bath, heralds, bannerets, and members of the council and clergy, some in gold, some in silver, their horses covered in plate. Then, in rank order, came the Garter knights, the rest of the nobility, the foreign ambassadors, each paired with an Englishman, merchants, soldiers, and knights; behind them the queen’s personal entourage, the earl of Sussex, her Chief Server, carrying the queen’s hat and cloak; and “two ancient knights with old-fashioned hats, powdered on their heads, disguised,” representing, as was traditional, the dukes of the former English territories of Normandy and Guienne. Gardiner and Paulet followed with the seal and mace; the lord mayor in crimson velvet carrying the golden scepter; the sergeants at arms; and the earl of Arundel bearing Mary’s sword.
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Then came Mary herself, riding in an open litter pulled by six horses in white trappings almost to the ground. Official accounts
describe her as “richly apparelled with mantle and kirtle of cloth of gold … all things thereunto appertaining, according to the precedents.”
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Mary was dressed as a queen consort. On her head she wore a gold tinsel cloth and a jeweled crown, which was described as being “so massy and ponderous that she was fain to bear up her head with her hands.”
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Around Mary’s litter rode four ladies on horseback: Edward Courtenay’s mother, the marchioness of Exeter; and the wives of the duke of Norfolk, the earl of Arundel, and Sir William Paulet. Next came the carriage carrying Elizabeth and Anne of Cleves; then lines of peereses, ladies, and gentlewomen, some in chariots, some on horseback, and the royal henchmen dressed in the Tudor colors of green and white.
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For a mile and a half, the grand procession wound its way through the graveled streets of London. The aldermen of the city stood within the rails; behind them the multitudes, “people resorted out of all parts of the realm, to see the same, that the like have not been seen before.”
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The procession was, Renard reported, “a memorable and solemn one, undisturbed by any noise or tumult.”
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From the Tower to Temple Bar, Mary was greeted by an array of civic pageantry. At Fenchurch Street, Genoese merchants had created a triumphal arch decorated with verses praising Mary’s accession: as she passed, a boy dressed as a girl and carried on a throne by men and “giants” delivered a salutation.
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At Cornhill, the Florentines paid tribute to Mary’s triumph over Northumberland’s forces by invoking an image of Judith, the Israelite heroine, saving her people from Holofernes, the Assyrian leader, and of Tomyris, who had led her people to victory against the all-conquering Cyrus. In the pageant, an angel clothed in green, trumpet in hand, was strung up at the highest point between four gigantic “pictures.” As the angel put the trumpet to his mouth, a trumpeter hidden within the pageant “did sound as if the noise had come from the angel, to the great marvelling of many ignorant persons.”
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In Cornhill and Cheap, the conduits ran with wine and pageants were performed in which people stood singing verses in praise of their queen.

At St. Paul’s, Mary was addressed by the recorder of London and the chamberlain before being presented with a purse containing a thousand marks of gold, a gesture of goodwill “which she most thankfully
received.”
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At the school in St. Paul’s churchyard, the playwright John Heywood, sitting under a vine, delivered an oration in Latin and English; and at the dean of St. Paul’s Gate, choristers held burning tapers that gave off “most sweet perfumes.”
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At Ludgate, minstrels played and children sang songs of joy. Then, passing through Temple Bar by early evening, Mary finally reached Whitehall and took leave of the lord mayor. The following day she would be crowned queen of England.

A
T ELEVEN IN THE MORNING ON SUNDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1553, MARY
proceeded to the south transept of Westminster Abbey for her coronation. It was a sight not seen before and combined elements of both precedent and novelty. The queen, dressed as a male monarch in traditional state robes of crimson velvet, walked beneath a canopy borne by the barons of the Cinque Ports; the duke of Norfolk carried the crown, the marquess of Winchester the orb, and the earl of Arundel the ball and scepter. Before her, in pairs, walked an ordered procession of gentlemen, knights, and councillors, headed by the bishop of Winchester and ten others, all with miters on their heads and crosses in their hands.
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In the center of the abbey a raised walkway led to the royal stage and then steps to a higher plinth bearing the coronation chair. It had seated every monarch at coronations since Edward the Confessor more than five hundred years before. Now, for the first time, it would seat a queen regnant. Two noblemen led Mary to each corner of the dais so the congregation might see her. To this assembly Gardiner made his address:

The gathered throng answered as one: “Yea, yea, yea! God save Queen Mary!”

Mary went before the altar and, as she lay facedown on a velvet cushion, prayers were said over her. From the side of the stage she listened to the sermon of George Day, bishop of Chichester, on the subject of the obedience owed to a monarch. Then, kneeling in front of the altar, Mary prepared to make her oaths, pledging to defend her subjects, maintain peace, and administer justice throughout the realm. She had feared that the oath would be tampered with so that in some way she would be called upon to condone the new religion, and she therefore added the words “just and licit laws” to the traditional form. “Will ye grant to keep to the people of England and others your realms and dominions, the
just and licit
laws and liberties of this realm and other your realms and dominions?” Mary was asked.
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Then, lying prostrate before the high altar, the choirs sang “Veni Creator Spiritus.”

After the choir quietened, Mary moved to a curtained traverse at the left-hand side of the altar, accompanied by some of her ladies. Here she made her first change of clothing in preparation for her anointing. This, the most solemn part of the ceremony, was intended to mark the monarch with the indelible stigma of divine majesty. Her mantle of crimson velvet was removed, and she returned to the altar in a simple petticoat of purple velvet. She lay again before the altar, a pall held over her by four knights of the Garter, and she was anointed by Bishop Gardiner on her shoulders, breast, forehead, and temples with the holy oil and chrism secretly obtained from Flanders.
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Returning to the traverse dressed in her robes of state, Mary was led to the altar, where she received the ornaments, her symbols of power: the sword, the scepter, and the orbs. She was crowned with the crown of Edward the Confessor, the imperial crown of the realm, and with another specially made for her, a vast yet simply designed crown with two arches, a large fleur-de-lis, and prominent crosses. The choir then burst into a Te Deum.
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Mary was crowned in a fashion similar to her male predecessors: “girt with a sword as when one is armed a knight, and a King’s sceptre was placed in one hand, and in the other a sceptre wont to be given to queens, which is surmounted by doves.”
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Finally, the crimson mantle furred with ermine was fastened on her shoulders. Arrayed in her
regalia, Mary was seated in Saint Edward’s Chair, where she received the nobles, led by Gardiner, who paid homage to her as queen.
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At four that afternoon Mary emerged from the abbey as queen of England. Carrying the orb and scepter, which “she twirled and turned in her hand,” she proceeded back along the carpeted path to Westminster Hall for a ceremonial dinner. Gardiner sat to her right, Elizabeth and Anne of Cleves to her left, though at a distance.
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Four swords were held before her as she ate, and according to custom she “rested her feet on two of her ladies.”
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The earl of Derby, high steward of England, and the duke of Norfolk, high marshal, rode around the hall on chargers trapped with cloth of gold, overseeing the banquet and maintaining order. After the second course, the banquet was interrupted by a horseman, the queen’s champion, Sir Edward Dymocke, who entered dressed in bright armor, ostrich plumes in his helmet, with a surcoat of armorial bearings. He read out a challenge: “Whosoever shall dare to affirm that this Lady is not the rightful Queen of this Kingdom I will show him the contrary, or will do him to death” and threw down his glove.

Returning to the queen, he proclaimed that seeing that “none was found who dared to gainsay him or take up his glove, he hailed her as the true and rightful Queen.”
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F
OUR DAYS AFTER HER CORONATION, MARY OPENED HER FIRST
Parliament. As she looked on from her throne, Bishop Gardiner, the lord chancellor, made his opening address in which he “treated amply of the union with religion,” demonstrating how many disadvantages had befallen the realm owing to its separation. “Parliament,” he declared, “was assembled by her Majesty and the Council to repeal many iniquitous laws against the said union, and to enact others in favour of it.”
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In one of its first acts, Parliament declared that the marriage of Mary’s parents, Katherine of Aragon and Henry VIII, had been valid and that Mary was therefore legitimate. The queen’s title was vindicated from “the corrupt and unlawful sentence” that had divorced her father and mother and from subsequent laws that had declared her illegitimate. It was what Mary had fought for since the years of her adolescence. Finally she had restored her mother’s memory and confirmed her own legitimacy.

Next came the repeals of the Edwardian religious legislation that had pronounced on the Prayer Book, the sacraments, and married priests, thereby restoring the Church settlement to that of the final years of her father’s reign. All offenses defined as treasonable during Henry and Edward’s reigns were repealed, and the law was taken back to its basic definition of 1352, with evidence of guilt now lying once more in action against the monarch rather than in a denial of the royal supremacy.

To make the bills acceptable to the House of Commons, all allusion to the pope had to be avoided. Holders of monastic and chantry lands,
whatever their doctrinal beliefs, feared that a return to Rome would threaten the property that they had received following the dissolution of the monasteries during the 1530s. Writing to Pole, Mary explained that the Commons would not hear of “the abolishing, specially of the law that gave the title of the supremacy of the Church in the realm of the crown, suspecting that to be an introduction of the Pope’s authority into the realm, which they cannot gladly hear of.”
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Although the bill was eventually passed, it demonstrated that though Parliament was willing to restore church services and religious ceremonies to the pattern of the 1540s, it was not prepared to sanction the abolition of the Supreme Headship and the return of papal authority in the realm. The Commons would not sacrifice their property and revenue from ex-monastic lands; these would need to be safeguarded before a return to Rome could be achieved.
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“There is difficulty about religion, the Pope’s authority and the restitution of Church property,” Renard explained, “so much so that a conspiracy has been discovered among those who hold that property either by the liberality of the late Kings Henry and Edward, or by purchase, who would rather get themselves massacred than let go.” Renard’s message to the emperor was clear: “The majority of Parliament refuses to admit the Pope’s authority or to come back into the fold.”
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