Mary Tudor (42 page)

Read Mary Tudor Online

Authors: Linda Porter

The imperialists, and particularly Simon Renard, would soon play on Mary’s reservations about her sister. Their agenda was to put the new queen firmly in their camp, not encourage a close relationship with the Protestant Elizabeth, who, by statute, was the heiress to Mary’s throne. There was still something of an aura of disbelief among European observers, both French and Habsburg, that Mary had come to the throne at all.The emperor was as delighted as he was surprised. ‘These news’, wrote Charles V, ‘are the best we could have had from England, and we render thanks to God for having guided all things so well … You will … offer her our congratulations on her happy accession to the throne, telling her how great was our joy on hearing it.’ So how were they to explain his complete lack of support? If an opportunity arose in private audience, without the more cynical councillors looking on, ‘… you may give her a more detailed account of the reasons that moved us to send you to England, and explain to her that you were instructed to proceed very gradually in your negotiation, with the object of rendering her some assistance, and that we were hastily making preparations, under cover of protecting the fisheries, to come to her relief ’.
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His words are a wonderful example of redefining policy to suit one’s own purpose, but whether or not Mary was satisfied with such excuses does not really matter. Charles had every reason to assume she would remain close to him, as she had done all her adult life, and he would not be disappointed. Still, it was probably the nearest he came to embarrassment where Mary was concerned. It did not trouble him for long.
The French had other concerns. They were closely identified with Northumberland’s policy and had not relished the idea of Mary, with her Habsburg leanings, becoming queen. Yet right from the start of the succession crisis, they were less convinced of Jane’s durability than the imperial representatives. Antoine de Noailles, their cool-headed ambassador, had not been in London long and his dispatches in early July give the impression of someone who was observing rather than predicting events. On 13 July, he made all the right noises about Jane, describing her as ‘virtuous, wise and beautiful and who promises much’, but he made no attempt to conceal Mary’s stance, even helpfully supplying a map showing London, Mary’s house at Hunsdon and Norwich, where he believed she was.The next day he reported that her cause was growing and revealed that he had dined with theVenetian ambassador, who spoke warmly of Mary and told him that she was more popular with the people than Queen Jane. On 23 July Noailles, realising that the French must shift their position now Mary’s accession was complete, wrote asking for new instructions. These did not come quickly. When the constable of France, Montmorency, did write, on the last day of July, he told Noailles to adopt an approach that the ambassador could well have thought out for himself. He was to emphasise French goodwill towards Mary and state that the French knew she was the legitimate - and popular - choice of the country.
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The international situation would loom large from the first days of the reign, but, for the present, it was only one of a myriad of policy areas demanding urgent attention. Mary had no time for contemplation, or to go over quietly in her own mind just how far she had come in the space of a mere fortnight. Her first council, numbering about 20 men, met before her entry to London. It was an interim body, but the business of government was pressing and there was, as she later told Renard, so much to do that she scarcely knew where to begin. Despite their differences and her mistrust of most of them, there was one outstanding consideration that united the queen and her advisers. Northumberland’s hour of reckoning was at hand.
He and his sons were honourably treated during their imprisonment, but the Dudleys and their supporters were not among the inmates allowed to present themselves to Mary when she arrived at the Tower of London on 3 August. More fortunate beneficiaries of the old tradition that new monarchs should show clemency were four people who could not have expected early release while Northumberland remained in power. One was a woman, Mary’s old friend the duchess of Somerset, who went back to her family. She lived long into the Elizabethan period, dying in 1587. The other three were men. The youngest was Edward Courtenay, a distant cousin of Mary and son of Katherine of Aragon’s loyal supporter, Gertrude, marchioness of Exeter. His mother, her hopes suddenly raised for the future, rode proudly with Mary as she came into London. Also there when the queen entered the Tower were Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, and the old duke of Norfolk, who knelt now to do homage to the woman whose religious views he shared but whose prospects he had sought to destroy. Each man would play a prominent part in the first two years of Mary’s reign but, for the prelate and the senior aristocrat, there was no period of recuperation from their imprisonment. Gardiner was named Lord Chancellor and Norfolk, appointed High Steward, found himself on 18 August presiding, once more, over a showpiece trial.
Nearly a month had elapsed since Northumberland’s arrest, more than sufficient time for him to decide that he would not submit without defence to a court of his peers. The conduct of his trial, which had as much to do with ritual as justice, impressed foreign observers with its solemnity.The English did these sorts of things very well:‘As your lordship knows,’ the merchant Antonio Guaras wrote to the duke of Alberquerque in Spain, ‘these proceedings are here conducted with great dignity.’
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Yet there was not the slightest doubt - except perhaps in Northumberland’s own mind - that he would be found guilty and condemned to die. The process by which this decision would be reached, however, was part of the spectacle.
He kept his temper well under control as he faced the men who had deserted him. He came ‘with a good and intrepid countenance, full of humility and gravity’. His defence was simple and logical, if no doubt unpalatable to his audience. What had he done but to carry out the commands of Edward VI, in a manner agreed by all the council? If he was guilty of high treason, so were they. His claim that his actions were carried out under the broad seal of England was untrue, but the rest of his argument was perfectly sound. But it was never going to sway anyone.‘His peers beheld him with a severe aspect,’ Guaras noted.When the death sentence was pronounced he asked for, and was granted, a nobleman’s death. Then he made another, unexpected, request. Faced with the fast-approaching end of his life, he must think about his soul. So he asked ‘that I may have appointed to me some learned man for the instruction and quieting of my conscience’.The churchman who counselled him was Stephen Gardiner, a long-standing foe but a man who was suddenly restored to influence and power. Whether through personal anguish or political manoeuvring, Northumberland was about to give the new regime a huge propaganda victory.
The most striking aspect of his behaviour, in the few days left to him, was the duke’s rejection of the religious beliefs he had done so much to impose on England during Edward’s reign. There has been a great deal of debate over whether his return to the Catholic faith was genuine or affected as a last-ditch attempt to be spared the axe. It is impossible to know what passed between him and the bishop or whether it had any part in the commutation of the death sentence on his eldest son. If he had also been promised mercy, he was to be disappointed. On 21 August, the day fixed for his execution, he took mass in the chapel of the Tower, telling those who came to observe his change of heart: ‘I do faithfully believe that this is the very right and true way, out of the which true religion you and I have been seduced these sixteen years past by the false and erroneous preaching of the new preachers, the which the only cause of the great plagues and vengeance which hath light upon the whole realm of England and now likewise worthily fallen upon me’.
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It is worth noting that his sons made no such expression of a change of faith.The words may have been supplied to him or they may have been his own. But any hopes that they might be the means of sparing his life were soon to be disappointed.The lord lieutenant of the Tower came to him later in the day to tell him to be prepared for death the next morning.
What is more likely is that Northumberland did not want to die, and not just because he feared death, but because, as a servant of the Crown, he viewed it as a waste of his talents and experience.The desperate letter he is said to have penned on the last night of his life may not be genuine. It was addressed to Arundel, a man whom he had wronged and who was scarcely likely to intercede on his behalf, but some of its sentiments do reflect the image he had of himself. John Dudley knew he had misjudged Mary.Very well, it was a mistake, but he had acknowledged it and he could not see it as an impediment to serving her now she was queen. ‘Alas my good lord,’ the letter said,
is my crime so heinous as no redemption but my blood can wash away the spots thereof? An old proverb there is and true that a living dog is better than a dead lion. O that it would please her good grace to give me life, yea, the life of a dog, that I might live and kiss her feet, and spend both life and all I have in her honourable service, as I have the best part already under her worthy brother and her most glorious father…O my good lord, remember how sweet life is and how bitter ye contrary …
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In the end it was Jane Grey herself, the girl who, by his own admission, he had thrust into peril, who summed up his predicament as well as anyone. Her outraged eloquence betrays a depth of emotion that she seldom showed. ‘Woe worth him!’ she cried.
He hath brought me and my stock in most miserable calamity and misery by his exceeding ambition. But for the answering that he hoped for his life by his turning, though other men be of that opinion, I utterly am not; for what man is there living, I pray you, although he had been innocent, that would hope of life in that case; being in the field against the queen in person as general, and after his taking, so hated and evil spoken of by the commons? … Who was judge that he should hope for pardon, whose life was odious to all men? But what will ye more? Like as his life was wicked and full of dissimulation, so was his end thereafter … Should I, who am young and in my few years, forsake my faith for the love of life? … But life was sweet, it appeared; so he might have lived, you will say, he did not care how.
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Reluctant in the face of death and anguished in mind, Northumberland nevertheless affirmed at the end that his rediscovery of the old faith was personal and not the result of pressure. He said he had ‘no shame’ in returning to God.When he went to the scaffold on 22 August 1553, there was a large crowd present to see John Dudley die. An eyewitness description of his last moments captures the man, brave in public but still not quite accepting his fate.There are signs that he held out the hope of a reprieve right till the last moments:
And as the bandage [blindfolding his eyes] was not well fitted when he was about to stretch himself upon the beam, he rose again upon his knees, and surely figured to himself the terrible dreadfulness of death. At the moment when he again stretched himself out, as one who constrained himself and willed to consent patiently, without saying anything, in the act of laying himself out … he smote his hands together, as one who should say, this must be …
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So passed from this world one of the most enigmatic men of Tudor England. A competent rather than brilliant soldier but a politician of great skill and resolution, he was undone by one supreme error of judgement. He took longer than most to rise to a position of influence but could not imagine rescinding power once he had gained it.The council chamber was his natural milieu, a confined space where his serious and unyielding personality could intimidate men for whom he personally cared little. He had acquired wealth but lacked an affinity and learned the hard way from Mary, a woman he dismissed as a serious opponent, the value of loyal support. His downfall seemed a disaster for his large family and his wife never recovered from the loss of the man she called her most dear lord. She survived him by less than two years. In 1555 his heir, the earl of Warwick, died within 24 hours of being released from the Tower, to add to the family sorrows. But his other sons lived to restore their fortunes and Robert Dudley became the favourite of Elizabeth I, completing in her reign a century of Dudley service to the Crown. So, in the end, the dying wish of Northumberland, that his ‘childer’ would not suffer for their obedience to him, was fulfilled.
 
Mary had shown mercy and restraint in her dealings with the politicians who had tried to keep her off the throne. This policy, advocated by Charles V and her own advisers, was expedient but could not be extended to Northumberland. He was the new regime’s priority in August, his execution an exemplary way of sending out the message that there would not be generalised retribution but that treason would not go unpunished. Once he had gone, Mary could move forward with confidence and begin to put in place her vision for England. She was the queen, but first she must be crowned.

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