Mary Tudor (48 page)
Authors: Anna Whitelock
S
INCE HIS APPOINTMENT AS PAPAL LEGATE ON AUGUST
5, 1553, Cardinal Pole had been petitioning Mary to allow him to return to England. He had traveled as far as Brussels but had been prevented from going any farther as the emperor wanted to secure Philip’s marriage to Mary before England embarked on the path of Catholic restoration.
Pole, however, argued that nothing should stand in the way of the Church’s immediate and unconditional return to Rome.
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He believed the queen’s marriage to Philip was “even more universally odious than the cause of the religion,” and Mary feared his hostility to it.
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As the months passed and there was no sign of his zealous advice being heeded, the cardinal’s letters to Mary became more and more strident. “It is imprudent and sacrilegious to say that matters of religion must be cleverly handled, and left until the throne is safely established,” he
wrote; “what greater neglect can there be … than by setting aside the honour of God to attend to other things, leaving religion to the end?”
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In many ways Pole and Mary were kindred spirits. Both had suffered for their faith and lived through years of isolation in fear of death. Pole had been in exile for much of his life; both had lost their mothers to Henry VIII’s cruelty. But England had changed in his twenty-year-long exile, since Henry’s break with Rome and the execution of his elder brother, Henry, Lord Montague, and his mother, Margaret Pole. Years of antipapal propaganda had left many English people hostile to the idea of a return of papal authority. A generation had grown up knowing only the king as head of the Church. Meanwhile, Church lands had fallen into secular hands and their “possessioners” were not prepared to give them up. Finally, though, with the Spanish marriage concluded and a compromise reached, Parliament repealed Pole’s attainder for treason and the cardinal could return to England.
On November 20, some fifteen months after his appointment as legate, Pole landed at Dover. Two days later, he journeyed to London, accompanied by an ever-increasing train of English noblemen and councillors. With Londoners lining the banks of the Thames, Pole took to the river at Gravesend, his large silver cross, an emblem of his legatine authority, prominent in the state barge. At noon he arrived at Whitehall, where he was met on a landing stage by Philip. With the sword of state borne before them, the king and cardinal proceeded to the Presence Chamber, where the queen awaited them. Pole had not seen Mary since she was a young princess. He knelt in front of the queen; she “received him with great signs of respect and affection; both shed tears.”
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A week after his arrival in England, Pole appeared before both Houses of Parliament at Whitehall. Having expressed his gratitude for the admission into the realm of a man hitherto “exiled and banished,” he outlined the cause of his coming. The pope had, he claimed, “a special respect for their realm above all other.” While others nations had been converted gradually, “this island the first of all islands, received the light of Christ’s religion.”
It was a spurious appeal to English nationalism, a providential
version of history, intended to make Roman Catholicism suitably English. England was, in Pole’s view, the chosen Catholic nation. God “by providence hath given this realm prerogative of nobility above other,” and Mary was deemed its savior. “When all light of true religion seemed utterly extinct, as the churches defaced and altars overthrown … in a few remained the confession of Christ’s faith, namely in the breast of the Queen’s excellency.” When people conspired against her and “policies were devised to disinherit her, and armed power prepared to destroy her … she being a virgin, helpless, naked and unarmed, prevailed, and had the victory over tyrants.” Mary was the Virgin Queen who had restored the national religion.
With carefully chosen words Pole assured Parliament that his commission was “not one of prejudice to any person”:
I come not to destroy but to build. I come to reconcile, not to condemn. I come not to compel, but to call again. I come not to call anything in question already done, but my commission is of grace and clemency to such as will receive it, for touching all matters that be past, that shall be as things cast into the sea of forgetfulness.
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Two days later, a delegation from Parliament presented themselves at Whitehall, where Gardiner made their supplication:
We the lords spiritual and temporal, and the commons of this present Parliament assembled, representing the whole body of the realm of England and dominions of the same, do declare ourselves very sorry and repentant of the schism and disobedience committed in this realm and the dominions of the same, against the said See Apostolic … that we may, as children repentant, be received into the bosom and unity of Christ’s church. So as this noble realm, with all the members thereof, may in unity and perfect obedience to the See Apostolic.
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At five in the afternoon of Saint Andrew’s Day, November 30, Pole was conducted in full pontifical robes from Lambeth Palace to Westminster. There, with the Lords and Commons and the king and
queen kneeling before him in their robes of estate, he formally absolved the country from its years of schism:
We, by apostolic authority given unto us by the most holy lord Pope Julius III, his Vice-regent on earth, do absolve and deliver you, and every [one] of you, with the whole Realm and the Dominions thereof, from all Heresy and Schism, and from all and every judgement, Censures and pains, for that cause incurred; & also so we do restore you again unto the unity of our Mother the holy Church … in the name of the Father, of the son and of the Holy Ghost.
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According to John Elder, it “moved a great number of the audience with sorrowful sighs and weeping tears to change their cheer.” England had returned to the Catholic fold. It was a moment of high ceremony and emotion.
That evening Mary gave a banquet for the king and his gentlemen, and after supper there were dancing and masques. The king had that day shown “liberality to the ladies of the court, who were dressed in the gowns he had given them.”
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The news of England’s return to the fold quickly reached Rome, whereupon the pope ordered processions, “giving thanks to God with great joy for the conversion of England to his Church.”
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THE SUNDAY AFTER
the reconciliation with Rome—the first day of Advent—Mary, Philip, and Pole attended a High Mass sung by the bishop of London at St. Paul’s Cathedral. The crowds “both in the church and in the streets, were enormous, and displayed great joy and piety, begging the cardinal for his blessing.”
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After Mass, Gardiner preached at St. Paul’s Cross, basing his sermon on the Book of Romans:
Now also it is time that we awake out of our sleep, who have slept or rather dreamed these twenty years past. For as men intending to sleep do separate themselves from company and desire to be alone, even so we have separated ourselves from the
See of Rome, and have been alone, no realm in Christendom like us.
He continued:
During these twenty years we have been without a head. When King Henry was head perhaps there was something to be said for it, but what a head was Edward, to whom they had to give a protector! He was but a shadow. Nor could the Queen, being a woman, be head of the Church … now the hour is come … the realm is at peace … It is time for us also to awake.
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At the end “all those present, over fifteen thousand people, knelt down” to receive Pole’s blessing, crying out “Amen, amen!” “A sight to be seen it was, and the silence was such that not a cough was heard.”
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THE QUEEN IS WITH CHILD
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PON HIS ARRIVAL AT WHITEHALL ON NOVEMBER 24, CARDINAL
Pole had addressed Mary with the opening words of the Ave Maria: “Hail, thou art highly favored, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women,” the words by which the Angel Gabriel had heralded the Virgin Mary’s conception of Jesus. Pole’s greeting was, it seems, equally prophetic. Shortly after he left, Mary sent a messenger after him. She had felt her child stir when Pole greeted her; she knew she was pregnant.
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It followed weeks of rumor and fevered speculation. Renard had written in his dispatch in mid-September, just two months after the wedding, that one of the queen’s physicians had told him that the queen “is probably with child.” The English ambassador in Brussels, Sir John Mason, reported weeks later, in response to the emperor’s question “How goeth my daughter’s belly forward?” that although he had heard nothing formally from the queen, others had told him “her garments wax very strait.”
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With the pregnancy now seemingly confirmed, letters were sent from the Council to bishops ordering Te Deums to be sung and special prayers offered for this “good hope of certain succession” and to give thanks for her “quickening with child, and to pray.”
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The news was proclaimed across Europe. “The Queen is with child,” announced Ruy Gómez; “may it please God to grant her the issue that is so solely needed to set affairs right here and make everything smooth … this pregnancy will put a stop to every difficulty.”
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Every aspect of Mary’s appearance was scrutinized and reported on. Writing to the emperor in November, Renard told him, “There is no doubt that the Queen is with
child, for her stomach clearly shows it and her dresses no longer fit her.”
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And later the same month: the “lady is well with child. God be thanked! For she has felt the babe and presents all the usual signs on her breasts and elsewhere.”
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In the days before Christmas, Mary wrote to her father-in-law:
As for that child which I carry in my belly, I declare it to be alive and with great humility thank God for His great goodness shown to me, praying Him so to guide the fruit of my womb that it may contribute to His glory and honour, and give happiness to the King, my Lord and your son, to your Majesty, who were my second father in the lifetime of my own father, and are therefore doubly my father, and lastly that it may prove a blessing to the realm.
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Charles responded with enthusiastic expectation: “Be it man, or be it woman, welcome shall it be; for by that we shall be at the least come to some certainty to whom God shall appoint by succession the government of our estates.”
It was a sentiment shared by many. As long as Mary remained childless, there was grave anxiety in the kingdom, as John Mason explained during his audience with the emperor: “It maketh all good men tremble to think the Queen’s highness must die, with whom, dying without fruit, the realm were as good also to die.”
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The future of the Catholic restoration would depend on the fruitfulness of the marriage.
MARY WAS EXPECTED
to give birth on or before May 9. The chamber and nursery were made ready, the chief gentlewomen of the kingdom summoned to witness the birth, wet nurses and rockers put on standby, and the royal cradle “sumptuously and gorgeously trimmed” and a Latin verse and English translation inlaid upon it:
