The House of Tudor (40 page)

Certainly Elizabeth had some reason for annoyance. In November, the Queen was foolish enough to insult the heir presumptive by giving precedence to the Countess of Lennox and the Duchess of Suffolk at public functions. To be obliged to walk out of a room behind Margaret Lennox, the daughter of her aunt’s second marriage, and Frances Suffolk, mother of the convicted traitor Jane Grey, was too much for Elizabeth’s temper. Nor, indeed, could she afford to ignore such a deliberate slight. She showed her feelings by sulking in her own apartments and although Mary’s friends cut her, the younger element at Court - especially the younger male element - sided openly with the princess.

Simon Renard, who smelt heretical plots behind every bush and saw Elizabeth’s hand in all of them, heard rumours that she was entertaining the French ambassador in private. Elizabeth denied the accusation indignantly and renewed her demands to be allowed to retire into the country. This time leave was granted, and at the beginning of December the sisters met to say goodbye.

Mary had previously been given a good talking-to by Renard, who told her that she must make up her mind what to do about Elizabeth. Either she would have to regard her as an enemy and put her under some form of restraint (Renard himself favoured the Tower as a suitable residence for the princess), or else, for reasons of policy, she must treat her sister with at least outward civility. His words had some effect, for although he wrote ‘I had much trouble in persuading the Queen to dissemble’, Mary made a heroic effort and gave Elizabeth an expensive parting present of a sable hood. Her dislike of her young half-sister had grown by now into a near obsession and Renard observed ‘she still resents the injuries inflicted on Queen Catherine, her lady mother, by the machinations of Anne Boleyn, mother of Elizabeth’. All the courtesies were, however, observed at their leave-taking. Dc Noailles heard that there had been a complete reconciliation and, according to Renard, Elizabeth had begged the Queen not to believe anyone who spread evil reports of her without at least letting her know and giving her a chance to prove ‘the false and malicious nature of such slanders’.

Relieved of the strain imposed by her sister’s presence, the Queen should now have been free to concentrate on pleasanter matters - the matter of her own approaching marriage in particular. But here, too, the way ahead was stormy. Early in November, when it became generally known that Mary intended to marry Philip of Spain, rumbles of disapproval, ominous as distant thunder, were immediately audible. Many people, indeed, began to wonder if John Dudley was going to be proved right after all, for Philip was not merely a foreigner and a Catholic, he represented the most formidable Catholic power bloc in Europe. The Houses of Parliament sent a joint deputation to the Queen to beg her to marry an Englishman and there were grave misgivings within the Privy Council itself.

No one, of course, questioned that the Queen should marry and the sooner the better. Obviously she must have a husband to support and guide her and undertake, as Simon Renard tactfully put it, ‘those duties which were not the province of ladies’; but, in the opinion of the great majority of her subjects, her wisest choice of consort would have been Edward Courtenay, ‘the last sprig of the White Rose’. Courtenay, now in his mid-twenties, had good looks, high birth, charm and education (he had had plenty of leisure for study) to recommend him, but he inevitably lacked experience in the ways of the world and was an essentially shallow, rather commonplace youth. Mary had released him from the Tower and was prepared to be kind to him - his only crime, after all, lay in being the great-grandson of Edward IV and his parents had been among her mother’s most influential supporters. She made him Earl of Devon and arranged that he should be given special opportunities to make up for the time he had wasted in prison - rumour had it that young Courtenay was making up for lost time on his own account in an intensive tour of the London brothels - but, and the Queen made this very clear, she had no intention of marrying him or any other Englishman. Tragically, nothing in Mary’s experience had ever given her cause to love or trust her fellow countrymen and her desire for Philip, politically and personally disastrous as it was to prove, was natural enough in the circumstances. The fact that the Prince of Spain happened to be the most brilliant match in Europe weighed far less with her than the fact that he was one of her mother’s kin.

Simon Renard’s primary concern on taking up his post had been to put the Queen into ‘a marrying humour’. This in itself was not difficult. Her smiles and sidelong looks when the subject was raised made it abundantly clear how agreeable it was, and when Renard first dropped Philip’s name into the conversation he felt reasonably certain of a successful outcome. It was not all plain sailing, though. Mary worried that Philip would be too young for her (there was ten years’ difference in their ages) or that she would be too old for him and that she would not be able to satisfy him. This fear could scarcely be admitted even to such a close confidant as Renard but had to be hinted at in a confession of ignorance of ‘that which was called love’. Over three months of private interviews, slipping in and out through back entries and up the privy stairs escorted by confidential servants, Renard had patiently and dexterously piloted the nervous Queen through the shoals of her maidenly shrinking, self-doubt and vacillation. It was not the way he was accustomed to conduct such negotiations, but as Mary’s trust in him deepened and he began to understand her better, he saw with growing satisfaction that she would be like putty in his master’s hands; that physical love would overwhelm this simple but passionate woman who had so far schooled herself to an almost nun-like renunciation of the flesh.

One of the reasons officially advanced in favour of the Queen’s marriage was to secure an heir to safeguard the succession but, although nobody actually said so publicly, few people believed that Mary would ever be able to bear a child. Mary herself was not so sure. After all, God had already worked one miracle for her. Might he not work another and give her a son to ensure the future success of her mission? For, with Philip at her side and all the might of the Holy Roman Empire behind her, surely nothing could stop her bringing England back to Rome. She did not reach her decision lightly and when, on 29 October, after weeks of agonized heart-searching, tears and prayer, Mary finally gave her word to Renard in the presence of the Holy Sacrament that she would marry Philip and love him perfectly, it was done with desperate sincerity and in the conviction that her answer had been divinely inspired.

Stephen Gardiner, now Lord Chancellor, was the only Englishman with sufficient prestige to try and make the Queen understand the sort of trouble she was storing up, but unhappily there was little confidence between them. Mary could not forget that Gardiner had once been one of her father’s ablest instruments in the struggle for the divorce, and he was hampered by his known personal fondness for Courtenay. As Mary snappishly remarked, was it reasonable to expect her to marry someone just because a bishop had made friends with him in prison? Gardiner could only repeat, rather feebly, that the people would never stomach a foreigner who would make promises he would not keep. The Queen retorted that if her Chancellor preferred the will of the people to her wishes, then he was not keeping
his
promises. The Chancellor, with his long experience of Tudor temperament, gave up, saying it was too dangerous to meddle with the marriages of princes. Mary took an even higher tone with the parliamentary delegation. It was no business of theirs, she told them, to try and dictate to her on such a personal matter and added, in a burst of schoolgirlish petulance, that if they forced her to marry against her will, she would not live three months and they would only be defeating their own ends.

On the other side of the Channel, the French, seeing themselves threatened with encirclement, were full of gloomy forebodings, despite Mary’s assurances that she intended to continue in peace and amity with them, no matter whom she married. Henri 11 was not convinced. ‘It is to be considered’, he observed to Mary’s ambassador, Nicholas Wotton, ‘that a husband may do much with his wife; and it shall be very hard for any wife to refuse her husband anything that he shall earnestly require of her.’ Indeed, the fear that England would be dragged into war with France was one of the most serious objections to the Spanish marriage - an objection which, as it turned out, was to prove only too well-founded. But de Noailles in London had still not given up hope of preventing the marriage from taking place.

The Emperor was bending over backwards in his efforts not to offend the delicate susceptibilities of the English - an alliance which would give him command of the sea route between Spain and the Netherlands was worth any amount of diplomacy - but the English, in the grip of one of their periodic attacks of xenophobia, preferred to believe the rumours currently being spread by various interested parties; that a horde of Spaniards, all armed to the teeth, would shortly be landing on their coasts; that England would become a province of the Empire and the Pope’s authority reimposed by force. The undergrowth of alarm, suspicion and a general restless dissatisfaction over the way things were going was rapidly becoming tinder-dry and the French ambassador thought he knew the best way of setting a match to it. The Queen might have refused young Courtenay, but there was always Elizabeth. ‘From what I hear’, he wrote in December, ‘it only requires that my Lord Courtenay should marry her, and that they should go together to the counties of Devonshire and Cornwall. Here it can easily be believed that they would find many adherents, and they could then make a strong claim to the crown.’ Certainly the combination of Edward Courtenay and Elizabeth Tudor, both of them young, handsome, English and royal, should have been irresistibly appealing to a sentimental public, but de Noailles, who was no fool, could see at least one snag. ‘This misfortune’, he went on, ‘is that the said Courtenay is of such a fearful and timid disposition that he dare not make the venture.’ It was exasperating when there were so many influential people ready and willing to help the wretched youth.

Nevertheless, detailed plans for resisting the threatened Spanish invasion were now being drawn up. They were still being discussed when, on 2 January 1554, the Emperor’s envoys, led by Count Egmont, arrived ‘for the knitting up of the marriage’ between the Queen and the Prince of Spain. Egmont and his colleagues landed at Tower Wharf to the salute of ‘a great peal of guns’ from the Tower batteries. On Tower Hill a reception committee, headed by Courtenay, was waiting to conduct them ceremoniously through the City but they got no welcome from the watching crowds, for ‘the people, nothing rejoicing, held down their heads sorrowfully’.

The next couple of weeks were probably the happiest of Mary’s life. She had got her own way and could now legitimately dream of wedded bliss. Her councillors, their palms sticky with the Emperor’s gold, were growing noticeably less hostile and the Queen, as a bride-to-be, came in for some arch teasing which made her laugh and change colour. Well before the end of the month her shiny, insubstantial bubble had burst. The marriage treaty, signed on 12 January, should have been generous enough to satisfy the most exacting Englishman, but unfortunately the rising tide of panic and prejudice which was sweeping the country could no longer be stemmed by reason. The mindless rallying-cry ‘We will have no foreigner for our King’ had driven out common-sense, and within a week word had reached London that Sir Peter Carew was up in Devonshire ‘resisting of the King of Spain’s coming’. Almost simultaneously news came in that Sir Thomas Wyatt, son of the poet, was up in Kent ‘for the said quarrel in resisting the said King of Spain’; that Sir James Crofts had departed for Wales, ‘as it is thought to raise his power there’, and that the Duke of Suffolk had mysteriously vanished from Sheen.

The fourfold rising had been timed for March - to coincide with the date of Philip’s expected arrival - but someone had leaked information. It was generally believed that Courtenay, always a weak link, had lost what little nerve he possessed and blabbed to Gardiner, or else that the Chancellor had become suspicious and wormed a confession out of his protégé. The other conspirators, uncertain to what extent they had been betrayed and too deeply committed now to draw back, were scrambled into premature action. The movement in the West Country was virtually still-born. It had always depended very largely on Courtenay’s presence and the prestige of his name. Without him it rapidly collapsed and Peter Carew fled to France. But in Kent things looked serious. By 26 January Thomas Wyatt had taken Rochester and the crews of the royal ships lying in the Medway had gone over to him with their guns and ammunition.

A hastily mustered force, consisting of men of the Queen’s guard and the City militia, under the command of that old war horse the Duke of Norfolk, was sent to meet the threat; but the Londoners and a fair proportion of the guard promptly defected to the rebels amid rousing cries of *We are all Englishmen’. In the words of one Alexander Brett, they preferred to spend their blood in the quarrel of ‘this worthy captain Master Wyatt’ and prevent at all costs the approach of ‘the proud Spaniards’ who, as every right-thinking Englishman knew, would treat them like slaves, despoil them of their goods and lands, ravish their wives before their faces and deflower their daughters in their presence.

Thus encouraged, Wyatt pressed on towards the capital and on the thirtieth he was camped around Blackheath and Greenwich. From there he announced his terms: the custody of the Tower with the Queen in it, the removal of certain councillors and their replacements to be chosen by him. London was in an uproar of alarm and confusion, and for a couple of tensely anxious days the loyalty of the citizens hung in the balance. It was Mary herself who saved a potentially very ugly situation. Like every Tudor, she showed to her best advantage in a crisis demanding a display of physical and moral courage. Ignoring advice that she should seek her own safety, she marched into the City and made a fighting speech in the crowded Guildhall that not even Elizabeth could have bettered. Her audience rose to her, and when Wyatt reached Southwark on 3 February he found the bridge closed and heavily defended.