Mary Tudor (49 page)

Read Mary Tudor Online

Authors: Linda Porter

While still at the Tower, she had summoned her council and involved them in an unprecedented outpouring of emotion, which shows how deeply she felt about her role and also throws light on her relationship with the councillors and what she expected of them.
Sinking on her knees before them, [she] spoke at length of her coming to the throne, of the duties of kings and queens, her intention to acquit herself of the task God had been pleased to lay on her to His greater glory and service, to the public good and all her subjects’ benefit. She had entrusted her affairs and person, she said, to them, and wished to adjure them to do their duty as they were bound by their oaths; and she appealed especially to her Lord High Chancellor [Gardiner], reminding him that he had the right of administration of justice on his conscience. Her councillors were so deeply moved that not a single one refrained from tears. No one knew how to answer, amazed as they were by this humble and lowly discourse, so unlike anything ever heard before in England, and by the queen’s great goodness and integrity.
 
The cynical Renard, reporting this episode, wondered how some of these hardened political survivors, who were more accustomed to being physically assaulted by Henry VIII and tongue-lashed by Somerset and Northumberland during their conciliar service, would take Mary’s behaviour. Would they interpret it as a sign of weakness and feminine insecurity? But he did not doubt that ‘it had softened several hearts’.
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The queen’s speech, though highly revealing of her deep and impassioned commitment, was also intended to dispel doubts and heal rifts at a sacred moment. She realised the need to bind her council to her and to each other just before the symbolic marriage with her country that she was about to make at Westminster Abbey. She may have hoped, rather than expected, that it would have a lasting effect, but her sincerity was obvious.The still-repeated view that Mary did not want to work with her councillors is not upheld by this heartfelt and very personal appeal.
But there were other things, both great and small, that troubled her. Of these, perhaps the most awkward was her illegitimacy, which could be overturned only by Parliament. Mary was distressed at the thought that by statute law she would still be a bastard when she became an anointed queen. There had been discussions about calling Parliament before the coronation, to remove this embarrassment, but the consensus was that Parliament should not be seen to be endorsing the queen’s right to the throne, which was no proper part of its role. She was also very concerned about the morality of being crowned at a time when England was in schism, an anxiety that found its expression in a request for absolution to be given by Cardinal Pole for herself and all supporters of the old religion. Even the oil to be used for her anointing presented problems; that which had been used for her brother’s coronation was tainted by its association with the Anglican rites and the queen wanted it replaced with holy oil that was pure and uncontaminated. So she sent to the bishop of Arras in Brussels for oil from the Low Countries, but it arrived only just in time.
Mary’s quiet introspection as the colourful procession of her state entry progressed through London reflects the behaviour of a woman who did not see the need for elaborate gestures designed to please the crowd. In small groups, or at times of crisis, she could be supremely effective, but on show she was remote. She was at once the focus of attention and yet removed from it; this separate status was how she believed monarchy should be. God had chosen her to rule and do his will. This was the gift she would offer her subjects, and she was convinced that she would earn their gratitude and love by fulfilling God’s command. Calm and certain, Mary arrived by barge next morning at the old palace of Westminster, where the robing for the coronation would take place. It was a Sunday, the holiest day of the week.
The crowning of a queen who would rule in her own right was a completely new event in England, but the religious ceremonial of the coronation itself was five hundred years old and Mary was determined to be crowned ‘according to the olde custome’, though some of the order of the service reflected changes introduced in 1547, for Edward VI’s coronation, and the same ornaments were carried.There was a blurring of distinction between the traditions for the coronations of kings regnant and queen consorts, with some reports claiming that Mary went into Westminster Abbey with her hair down, as was normal for the wives of kings.
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But she went on foot and did not ride in a litter, as her grandmother, Elizabeth of York, had done. The queen, it was reported, ‘in parliament robes of crimson velvet under a rich canopy borne by the five barons of the cinque ports’, walked in procession from Westminster Hall to the abbey.
Blue cloth had been laid from the marble porch of Westminster Hall to the pulpit in the abbey, railed on either side. Along this passed the queen’s procession, beginning with the gentlemen, by twos, and then the knights, aldermen, the French and Latin secretaries, the privy council, the knights of the Garter and three naked swords, representing Justice (one for the Spirituality and one for the Temporality) and Mercy. The sword of state was carried by Edward Courtenay, newly ennobled as earl of Devonshire.The duke of Norfolk carried the crown and the marquess of Winchester the orb, while the earl of Arundel bore the sceptre. The queen’s train was carried by the duchess of Norfolk, assisted by Sir John Gage. According to Noailles, Elizabeth and Anne of Cleves immediately followed the queen into the abbey, but there is no other corroboration of this.
The ancient abbey of Westminster was richly decorated for Mary Tudor’s coronation. The pulpit was covered with red worsted and the stage royal from the choir to the high altar covered with cloth of gold and strewn with cushions of the same material.When the queen reached the mounting scaffold she went up seven stairs to sit on a great royal chair, covered with damasked cloth of gold. The chair was backed with pillars,‘whereon stood two lions of gold and in the midst of a turret with a fleur-de-lys of gold’.
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Once the queen was seated, the bishop of Winchester turned to the assembled grandees of England, with the words:‘Sirs, here present is Mary, rightful and undoubted inheritrix by the laws of God and man to the crown and royal dignity of this realm of England, France and Ireland, whereupon you shall understand that this day is appointed by the peers of this land for the consecration, inunction and coronation of said most excellent Princess Mary; will you serve at this time, and give your wills and assent to the same’. The people answered, ‘Yea, yea, yea. God save Queen Mary.’ After the acclamation, Mary gave her offering to God (20 shillings) and later lay prostrate on cushions while prayers were said over her. She then rose to listen to the sermon from the bishop of Chichester. It was on the obedience due to kings, an apposite topic, but the bishop was not, by some accounts, the most lively or concise of speakers, and his audience’s powers of concentration may have been taxed by his delivery.
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By now the ceremony was entering its most sacred phase. Mary swore her oaths lying before the altar and was then anointed by Gardiner, on the forehead, temples, shoulders and breasts, using the holy oil so lately arrived from Flanders. Lord Paget, Sir Thomas Cheyney, Sir John Gage and Sir Anthony St Leger held a canopy over the queen, allowing her some privacy, and she had facilitated the anointing by changing into a sleeveless corset of purple velvet and a robe of white taffeta.When Gardiner had dried her with a linen cloth, Frances Waldegrave stepped forward to lace up her mistress’s apparel, put on her hands a pair of linen gloves and drape her in a crimson velvet mantle. On Mary’s feet were slippers of crimson cloth of gold lined with crimson satin, decorated with ribbons of Venice gold. Thus gorgeously attired, she was crowned by Gardiner with the three crowns, while trumpets sounded between each crowning.When the gold coronation ring, familiarly known as the wedding ring of England, was put on her finger, the Te Deum was sung by the abbey choir. Then, as would have been done for a male monarch, she was accoutred with the sword and the spurs, and received the homage of her bishops and peers, who knelt and kissed her on the left cheek. As proceedings drew to a close, she made further offerings of bread, a cruet of wine and a pound of gold.
It was a long and arduous ceremony, demanding much of the woman at its centre. At about four o’clock Mary emerged, exalted, as sovereign queen of England. She carried the orb and the two sceptres, as both king and queen, the time-honoured symbols of her spiritual and worldly power. Still overcome with emotion as the reality of the ceremony sank in, she played absent-mindedly with the orb as she returned for the coronation dinner. Here, while more than three hundred dishes were offered to the normally abstemious Mary, who presumably tasted only a fraction of them, the ancient practices were enjoyed by the other diners. Gardiner, Elizabeth and Anne of Cleves, who all sat at the queen’s table, watched as her champion, Sir Edward Dymoke, rode up and down the hall challenging anyone who questioned her right. She drank to him and gave him the cup and his horse’s splendid trappings as his fee.
Her subjects, with the customary unruliness of the London crowd on such occasions, were determined to celebrate in their own way. Their priority was to take anything of value that remained from the street decorations and to scramble for the leftover meats from the meal, which were traditionally thrown out to anyone prepared to struggle for them. On this occasion, there was a near-riot. It was a far from dignified end to an otherwise solemn day.
When Mary retired to bed at Westminster that night, after further feasting, music and dancing, she had good cause to be satisfied with what had been achieved in the first two and a half months of her reign. But there was also uneasiness in her mind, and uncertainty.When Parliament met on 5 October, she intended to introduce a programme of political and religious change which she hoped would not meet with opposition. But there was one other, fundamentally important issue that could no longer be avoided now she was crowned, and that was to find a suitable husband. It was not a quest for which she felt the slightest enthusiasm.
Chapter Nine
 
 
Wyatt’s Rebellion
 
‘Lo now, even at hand, Spaniards be already arrived at Dover.’
 
Proclamation of Sir Thomas Wyatt the younger at Maidstone, 25 January 1554
 
T
he question of marriage had first been raised more than two months earlier, before Mary even entered London. It was not instigated by the queen herself, or even by her privy councillors, who were otherwise preoccupied in late July. Renard took the credit for introducing the idea at his initial audience with the queen at New Hall, on 29 July. To the English and their new monarch it was only one among many topics for consideration, and not the most pressing. But to the imperialists, it was the key to their policy, an unforeseen and God-given opportunity to swing the balance of power in their long-standing quarrels with France.There was one obvious solution that the emperor sought and it must be pursued carefully, but inexorably.
As soon as the coronation was over, Mary knew she could not put off any longer dealing with the marriage issue, distasteful as it was.The pressure from her councillors was mounting. She must come to a decision, first as to whether she should marry at all and, if she decided she must, who her husband was to be.The queen reluctantly reached the conclusion that she could not remain single, and the process caused her a great deal of emotional turmoil, but once her mind was made up she proceeded with a ruthless determination to get her way. The major difficulty she encountered was in the manner that this was publicly presented. She felt that, as the queen, she should not have to justify her decision to her country. Her coronation oath was sufficient proof of her responsibility. She would neither be denied nor contradicted, and she most certainly would not let anyone in England presume to tell her what she should do.
Initially, she was just as concerned by the insistence of the emperor’s representatives that she must consider her situation without loss of time, telling them: ‘She felt confident you would remember that she was 37 years of age and would not urge her to come to a decision before having seen the person and heard him speak, for as she was marrying against her private inclination she trusted your majesty would give her a suitable match.’ Her first letter as queen to Charles V, written several days later, was full of expressions of humble thanks for his congratulations on her accession, but it did not mention marriage at all.
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