Authors: Linda Porter
Mary Tudor (62 page)
His honeymoon was over, and now Philip needed to take stock of what role he could actually play in English politics. Simon Renard believed things would go well, and informed the emperor. But his analysis shrewdly put the impression Philip was making before the effectiveness of his position. The English thought of him ‘as a handsome prince of benign and humane countenance, and likely to turn out to be a good ruler’. It was thought that he would attend privy council meetings regularly, at least twice a week. There, he could learn the detail of government business and his presence might do much to bring about unanimity. Mary duly gave orders that notes were to be translated into Spanish. If this happened, such notes have not survived, nor is there any record of his attendance at meetings being frequent. Perhaps the language problem was just too great for him and he preferred to deal with the councillors, many of whom had already been amply rewarded by the emperor, on an individual basis, rather than waste his time in meetings where he could not follow what was being said. It is impossible to know whether he picked up much English during his time in the country, though he must have heard it spoken often enough. But there is no indication that he ever uttered more words in it than his goodnight wishes to the assembled throng when he first met Mary. Perhaps he did acquire some understanding but wished to keep it hidden, an effective tactic in getting people to speak openly. At conversational level, he could communicate adequately in Latin with English politicians. Still smarting under the restrictions placed on him by the marriage treaty and preoccupied by the problems of the Netherlands, all of his concentration initially was directed towards successfully developing a public image of charm and affability. For a reserved and proud man, this was no mean achievement.
His first priority was to try to sort out the difficulties posed by having two households.These did not, though, last long, because he realised he would have to accept the arrangements that Mary had made for him. In November he told Eraso, his father’s secretary, that he was embarrassed by the duplication of servants, ‘not so much on account of the expense as of the troubles it gave me’. Some of the English officers would be retained to serve permanently at table but he was not so keen on the bedchamber servants:‘they are accustomed to serve here in a very different manner from that observed at his majesty’s court, and as you know I am not satisfied that they are good enough Catholics to be constantly about my person’. But in general he was satisfied with the way things were going and the fact that the Spanish and English were getting on well together. There had been a few ‘unavoidable incidents’ and he had punished those involved firmly; there was, in his view, nothing brewing now.
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A good many Spanish gentlemen, and some of the Spanish artisans whose arrival threatened the livelihoods of their English counterparts, were also leaving or had left. It would all settle down.
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A good many Spanish gentlemen, and some of the Spanish artisans whose arrival threatened the livelihoods of their English counterparts, were also leaving or had left. It would all settle down.
His optimism hid his own discontent. He had been furious to discover that he had no English patrimony and would have to reward his supporters out of his Spanish income. Nor would the English agree to his coronation, saying that they already had a crowned queen. If this were not enough, he conceived, probably at the instigation of Ruy Gomez, an unhelpful dislike and distrust of Simon Renard.
The ambassador was rendered largely superfluous by the arrival of the Castilian entourage and he wanted to leave. His work was done. But, although allowed back briefly to Brussels, he was required to stay on in England until September 1555, growing ever more embittered at the way he was treated. His position had not, in fact, been easy since the early part of 1554. There was acrimony within the imperial embassy before Philip left Spain, when Dubois, still second-in-command, accused Renard of taking bribes in the aftermath of Wyatt’s rebellion. No firm evidence was found, but the suspicion stuck. Ruy Gomez raised it again in late August.‘I do not want to injure anyone,’ he wrote, in the damning fashion of a man who knew just what effect his words would have, ‘but I fear our ambassador’s attitude has not always been wise, for from what we have been able to make out, he has taken sides for one of the parties here, and as his influence with the queen is great he has been able to be of use to some and do serious harm to others. The result is that those who are out of favour are resentful, and one of them is Paget, who, as the ambassador himself confesses, helped him more than anyone else during the marriage negotiations.’ He went on to criticise Renard for getting ‘everything into a muddle’. But then he took a swipe at a greater adversary than the ambassador.‘I do not blame him but rather the person [the bishop of Arras] who sent a man of his small attainments to conduct so capital an affair as this match, instead of entrusting it to a Spaniard.’
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Ruy Gomez was actually Portuguese, not Spanish, but he was Iberian by birth and that made him an insider, in his own eyes and those of Philip.
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Ruy Gomez was actually Portuguese, not Spanish, but he was Iberian by birth and that made him an insider, in his own eyes and those of Philip.
So it was basically prejudice which damaged Simon Renard. What was to be expected, Ruy Gomez was saying, from someone like him? He was not one of them, and neither, for that matter, was Arras. The French-speakers who served Charles V so ably were looked down on by Philip and his staff. And there was probably also a psychological dimension to their reservations. Philip had to face the fact that Renard knew Mary better than he did, and was fully aware of the limitations on his power in England.Who better, since Renard had helped enshrine them in the terms of the treaty? There was truth in the assertion that the ambassador was a schemer, but so were all 16th—century diplomats. It was part of the job. Paget would have fallen out with Mary without Renard’s encouragement, but Philip did not know this.The one thing that he and the ambassador did agree on, however, was the state of religion in England. Although many Protestants had left in self-imposed exile, it was feared that some were returning.While England remained in schism, the benefits of Mary’s accession were in doubt. Philip himself had expressed doubts that his English servants were good Catholics. The queen’s religious programme had stalled and she very much wanted it taken forward, now that her marriage was concluded.The breach with Rome must be healed and Philip, the titular king of England, seemed ideally placed to handle the delicate manoeuvring required to reach a satisfactory outcome for both sides. It was to be one of the most significant achievements of his time as Mary’s husband.
Aware that the major stumbling block was always going to be the question of the return of Church lands, Philip concentrated on working with the privy council to ensure that their fears were addressed. The English ruling class was perfectly happy to hear mass but they would not contemplate giving up their wealth. The queen had tried leading by example, waiving Crown revenues from some former Church lands, but all she did was cause alarm and inflict some damage on her own finances. Philip knew that this approach would not gain the result Mary desired, which was to rid herself of the supremacy as established by her father and gain papal absolution for England’s 20 years of religious disobedience.
By November 1554, he had made good progress with his task. Despite his reservations about the imperial ambassador, he sent Renard off to Brussels to gain the agreement of Cardinal Pole, still stranded at the emperor’s court, and set about gaining the confidence of the privy council in England. Distribution of pensions from his own funds probably helped this process, but there was also general support, once it was clear that the Cromwellian redistribution of Church property would remain untouched. Satisfied at last, the council finally issued, on 3 November, an invitation to the long-absent Pole to return to his native land. Mary’s third parliament, summoned for 12 November, reversed the act of attainder against Pole and prepared to draft the bill for reunification with Rome.
Paget and Sir Edward Hastings were sent to escort the cardinal from Brussels but he set out before they arrived, meeting them at Ghent on 16 November. His eagerness is understandable, since as recently as late September he had written to Philip indirectly accusing the emperor of obstructing his return.‘A year has passed’, he complained,‘since I began to knock at the door of this royal house, and none has opened unto me.’
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He had suffered banishment and 20 years of exile to ensure that Mary would not be barred from the throne. As crowds came to see him on his journey from Dover to London, he knew that the prolonged ordeal was over. The archbishopric of Canterbury, the prize he always dreamed of, would now be his.
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He had suffered banishment and 20 years of exile to ensure that Mary would not be barred from the throne. As crowds came to see him on his journey from Dover to London, he knew that the prolonged ordeal was over. The archbishopric of Canterbury, the prize he always dreamed of, would now be his.
Still, it was thought prudent for him to arrive in London quietly, by river, rather than make a great entry. He came in the royal barge from Gravesend, landing at Whitehall steps on 22 November. Here Philip was waiting to take him to the queen, his kinswoman. Pole had not seen her since she was a young princess in full bloom. It was an emotional moment, as Mary ‘made a deep reverence to the king and cardinal, who were walking side by side’. Pole knelt and Mary raised him up. She and her husband, it was reported, ‘received him with great signs of respect and affection; both shed tears’.
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Then the three of them went together into the queen’s presence chamber, where they spent half an hour talking in English and Italian.
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Then the three of them went together into the queen’s presence chamber, where they spent half an hour talking in English and Italian.
Just over a week later Parliament was summoned to court to hear Pole give assurances, in the presence of the king and queen, that ‘my commission is not 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.’ On the last day of November, he pronounced the words Mary had longed to hear, absolving her country of its years of sin and schism: ‘Our Lord Jesus Christ, which with his precious blood has redeemed us, and purified all our sins and pollutions, in order to make himself a glorious bride without stains and without wrinkle, whom the Father made chief over the church, he through his mercy absolves you.’
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Pole was a considerable orator and his words made a great impression on those who heard them. And Mary at last could be confident that the sins of her father and brother were wiped clean. She wrote to Charles V to inform him of the return of her people to ‘the obedience of the Holy Church and the Catholic faith’, an outcome due in large part to her husband. And though this was a very solemn moment, she wanted to mark it with rejoicing as well as prayer. Renard reported that ‘the queen gave a banquet to the king and his gentlemen, and after supper there were dancing and masks.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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Pole was a considerable orator and his words made a great impression on those who heard them. And Mary at last could be confident that the sins of her father and brother were wiped clean. She wrote to Charles V to inform him of the return of her people to ‘the obedience of the Holy Church and the Catholic faith’, an outcome due in large part to her husband. And though this was a very solemn moment, she wanted to mark it with rejoicing as well as prayer. Renard reported that ‘the queen gave a banquet to the king and his gentlemen, and after supper there were dancing and masks.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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But points of difference about Church property remained, and the bill to restore England to Roman jurisdiction was not passed by Parliament until 3 January 1555, after some very hard talking. Philip found it necessary to speak to Pole himself, and Mary also joined a meeting with the privy council and lawyers just before Christmas when, provoked by references to statutes in her brother’s reign, she threatened to abdicate if her subjects decided to use the example of the Edwardian regime as guidance.
She had, though, played little direct part in the orchestration of the return to Rome, preferring, as she acknowledged to the emperor, to leave its management to Philip. As she never shirked responsibility, her reasons for following this course can only be conjectured. Although it meant a great deal to her personally, there were elements that may have embarrassed her. She loathed the supreme headship, with its unhappy associations of the persecution she had suffered in the 1530s, but she seems to have wanted someone else to rid her of it. Perhaps she also felt that matters of Church government were, as Pole himself had so bluntly told her, best left to men. Then there was also the international dimension of dealing with the papacy, which Philip’s Habsburg connections made him well equipped to handle. But there was probably also another, much more immediate and personal reason which explains why the queen was content to let her husband handle the delicate papal relationship. Mary believed that she was pregnant.
It was on 18 September, barely two months after the wedding, that Simon Renard first reported the news that everyone at the imperial court - and the majority of Englishmen - wanted to hear. ‘One of the queen’s physicians has told me that she is probably with child.’ Never one to miss an opportunity, the ambassador made sure that this piece of information was spread around. He was sure that the news, if true, would prove the panacea for all the ills with which England was still afflicted. It would silence malcontents in an outpouring of national joy, negate any threat posed by Elizabeth and dampen anti-Spanish sentiment.The next day his information was confirmed by Count Stroppiana, the duke of Savoy’s envoy to the emperor, who was visiting London. The count added an interesting piece of information based on his own observation; he had seen Mary being sick. Greatly heartened by the rumours coming from England, Charles V wrote to his son that he hoped the news of the queen’s pregnancy would be confirmed. And very soon it was. Ruy Gomez reported on 2 October that it was now definite that Mary was expecting a child. It ‘will put a stop to every difficulty’, he wrote.
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