Mary Tudor (46 page)

AT THREE IN THE
afternoon, to the blare of trumpets and cheers of the crowd, the royal couple walked hand in hand—the sword of state borne before the king by the earl of Pembroke—under a canopy back to the queen’s palace for the wedding banquet.
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Philip and Mary took their places at a raised table at the head of four long tables where the Spanish and English nobility were seated. Mary was served on gold plates, Philip on silver to indicate his subordinate status. Musicians played at the end of the hall throughout the banquet. When the feast was over and the queen had drunk a cup of wine to the health and honor of the guests, the party moved to an adjoining hall for dancing and entertainment. There was “such triumphing, banqueting, singing, masking and dancing, as was never seen in England heretofore, by the report of all men.”
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The king then retired to his chamber, the queen to hers, where they dined in private.

The evening ended with the blessing of the marriage bed. As one of Philip’s gentlemen wrote soon after, “the Bishop of Winchester blessed the bed, and they remained alone. What happened that night only they know. If they give us a son, our joy will be complete.”
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O
N AUGUST 4, THE BISHOP OF ARRAS WROTE TO RENARD, EXPRESSING
his “incredible content, that the marriage for which both had worked, for so long, was accomplished, to the mutual satisfaction of both parties” and that the king “was behaving in every way so well, that he had gained the approbation of all in England.” He foresaw many difficulties ahead but hoped that with gentleness and benignity they might not prove too great.
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After ten days of honeymooning in Winchester, the royal couple began their journey back to London, stopping en route at Windsor on the third for Philip’s installation as knight and cosovereign of the Order of the Garter.
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The earl of Arundel once again deputized for Mary, investing Philip with the robe, while Mary placed the collar around his neck.

On the eleventh they moved to Richmond as final preparations were made for their formal entry into the capital.

AT TWO O’CLOCK
on Saturday, August 18, Philip and Mary were met at Southwark by the lord mayor and aldermen and crossed into the city by London Bridge. Behind them followed the lords of the Council, foreign ambassadors, and the nobility of England and Spain, all on horseback, two by two in rank order. The lord mayor of London knelt down before them and gave the queen the mace, a symbol of power and authority in the city. The king and queen remounted their horses and, with two swords of state before them, rode into the city.

Some weeks before, Mary had issued a proclamation ordering all
her subjects to extend “courtesy, friendly and gentle entertainment” to the Spaniards, “without either by outward deeds, taunting words, or unseemly countenance” giving any insult to the visitors. Londoners were in a benevolent mood, and there was little ill feeling displayed toward the new king. The city had been decorated with splendid pageants for the occasion. At London Bridge two vast figurines greeted the royal couple. The mythical giants Corineus Britannus and Gogamogog Albionus, warriors from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s twelfth-century history of Britain, held between them a tablet on which were written verses lavishing praise on Philip and giving thanks for his safe arrival:

The king and queen rode on into Gracechurch Street, where Henry VIII was portrayed, a scepter in one hand and a book in the other, upon which was written
“Verbum Dei,”
“the Word of God.” It was the image that had appeared on the title page of the Great Bible of 1539, the first authorized version in English, which had shown Henry distributing the English Bible to his subjects—anathema to Catholics, who believed that scripture in the vernacular undermined the sanctity of its meaning. Such a provocative image of Protestant triumphalism was hardly what might be expected in a pageant welcoming a Catholic king and queen. After Mary and Philip had passed, Gardiner threatened the painter, Richard Grafton, with imprisonment in the Fleet. Grafton responded that he thought he had done well, declaring, “If I had known the same had been against your lordship’s pleasure, I would not have so have made him.” Grafton was ordered to paint out the book and replace it with a pair of gloves.
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At the end of Gracechurch Street stood a triumphal arch adorned
with statues and paintings, created by the merchants of the steelyard. On the left stood the figure of a woman, Hispania, supporting a castle; on the right stood Britannia with the arms of England. The pageant was decorated with pictures of battles on land and sea and the insignia of England and Spain. At the top of the arch was a mechanical image of King Philip on horseback and the inscription “In honour of worthy Philip the fortunate and most mighty Prince of Spain, most earnestly wished for.”
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At Cornhill, another pageant, surmounted with images of the royal couple, featured representations of four noble Philips from history: Philip, king of Macedonia, father of Alexander the Great; Philip, the Roman emperor; Philip the Bold; and Philip the Good of Burgundy. The third pageant, in Cheap, depicted Orpheus and the nine Muses. Near them men and children, dressed like wild beasts, lions, wolves, bears, and foxes, danced and leaped, this spectacle “pleasing their majesties very well.”
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The royal couple moved on to the little conduit at the west end of Cheap for the fourth pageant. Described as “the most excellent pageant of all,” it showed Philip and Mary’s shared genealogy from Edward III of England. Under a great tree was an old man, signifying Edward III, lying on his side with a white long beard, a closed crown on his head, and scepter and ball in his hands. On top of the tree the queen was shown on the right and the king to the left, and underneath letters of gold read:

Philip was presented not as the Spaniard of popular fears but as an Englishman. Mary’s own Spanish lineage was also ignored, and she was depicted as being wholly English. Their marriage was cast as one of concord and reconciliation: being both descended from John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, their marriage had united the divided Lancastrian house. The pageant highlighted the fact that Katherine of
Aragon, Charles V, and Philip could be traced back to Edward III through John of Gaunt; while Roman Catholicism, which for twenty years had been reviled as foreign and traitorous, was represented as the true patriotic faith of England.

At St. Paul’s a sumptuously dressed scholar presented the king and queen with a book, while at Fleet Street, Mary and Philip witnessed the final pageant. Set around a castle decorated with the “arms of all Christian realms,” four characters—a king and a queen (Philip and Mary), Justice bearing a sword, and Equality holding a pair of balances—were each crowned by a figure that descended on a rope from the top of the pageant. An inscription below read:

TWO WEEKS LATER
, Philip wrote to his sister, the princess regent of Spain, telling her, “We have visited London, where I was received with universal signs of love and joy.”
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But despite the welcoming pageantry, anti-Spanish feeling was never far away.

On August 20, two days after the celebrations, the city authorities were ordered to take the pageants down for fear of vandalism.
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At the time of the royal couple’s entry into London, the Tower chronicler described how “there was so many Spaniards in London that a man should have met in the streets for one Englishman above four Spaniards, to the great discomfort of the English nation.”
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And Renard told the emperor, “They, the English, loudly proclaim that they are going to be enslaved, for the Queen is a Spanish woman at heart and thinks nothing of Englishmen, but only of Spaniards and bishops.”
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It was going to be difficult, he told Charles, to reconcile Spaniards with Englishmen. The language was an obstacle, the English hated foreigners, “and the slightest altercation might be enough to bring about a very dangerous situation.”
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