Mary Tudor (65 page)

Read Mary Tudor Online

Authors: Linda Porter

 
Mary Alone
 
‘Cranmer is burned, standing obstinately in his opinions.’
 
Sir John Mason to Edward Courtenay, earl of Devon, Brussels, 29 March 1556
 
W
hatever her personal grief, the queen knew that matters of state always came first. She acknowledged this fully when she wrote to Charles V about her husband’s imminent departure: ‘My lord and good father, I have learned by what the king, my lord and good husband, has told me and also by the letter which you were pleased to send me that for a long time past the state of your affairs has demanded that your majesty and he should meet in order to be able to confer together and reach the appropriate decisions. However, you have been pleased to put off the moment of separating me from him until now, for which I humbly thank your majesty.’ Here was no mention of the travesty of her pregnancy, of course. Instead, she went on:‘I assure you, sire, that there is nothing in this world that I set so much store by as the king’s presence. But as I have more concern for your majesty’s welfare than for my own desires, I submit to what you regard as necessary. I firmly hope that the king’s absence will be brief, for I assure your majesty, his presence in this kingdom has done much good and is of great importance for the good governance of this country. For the rest, I am content with whatever may be your majesty’s pleasure.’
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It was a plaintive but dignified summation of her feelings.
Delayed by high winds at Dover, Philip did not cross to Calais until 4 September. On his arrival in Brussels he spent three days in consultation with his father, as the emperor reviewed with him the situation of the Low Countries. Charles was determined to abdicate, to invest his son with these strategically vital but troublesome lands. On 25 October, in an emotional ceremony, he addressed a large gathering in the great hall of the palace in Brussels. Worn by the responsibilities of a lifetime and the illnesses that plagued his body and spirit, CharlesV was a far cry from the energetic young prince that his daughter-in-law, Mary Tudor, had met in her childhood. His had been a life constantly on the move, from one country to another, from palace to palace, frequently in the saddle, on the field of battle, long periods apart from his wife and children; he had known little rest. And now he yearned for the quiet contemplation of the religious retreat, to return to Spain, the country of his mother, Juana the Mad, who had died only six months earlier. He knew that if he did not stop now, he would swiftly follow her to the grave. ‘I have been nine times to Germany,’ he told his audience, ‘six times to Spain, and seven to Italy; I have come here to Flanders ten times, and have been four times to France in war and peace, twice to England, and twice to Africa … without mentioning other lesser journeys. I have made eight voyages in the Mediterranean and three in the seas of Spain, and soon I shall make the fourth voyage when I return there to be buried.’
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Then, overcome with weeping, he signalled Philip to kneel before him and, placing his hands on the head of his son, he invested him with the Netherlands.They would be a constant source of friction, rebellion and bloodshed for much of Philip’s long life.
Perhaps Charles took some comfort from the knowledge that his son was also king of England. If so, that point was not reinforced by Mary’s presence.There is no indication that consideration was ever given to the possibility of her accompanying Philip to this important family event. The privy council would not have been enthusiastic about her leaving the country, even for a brief period, yet her father had travelled during his reign, for both diplomacy and war. Like her sister Elizabeth, Mary never left England, though she thought about it often enough. Her failure to produce a child, as well as the reservations of her councillors, probably explains her absence. Philip was already thinking about the future of England and the succession. The attendance of his haggard, disappointed and sterile wife would have done nothing but raise doubts in Brussels, at a time when the family needed a show of unity. She was better left by herself in England.
And it was not just the emperor who was bidding the Netherlands farewell. After years as her brother’s lieutenant in a country she disliked, surrounded by people she detested, Mary of Hungary had been given permission to retire, as well. It was a favour that was hard won and given only with reluctance. In a letter to the emperor written in August 1555, this severe woman, who had known little love or happiness, stated with absolute clarity the demands she had faced over the years and the difficulty of being a woman ruler in 16th—century Europe. She felt that her brother had vindicated her wish to step down by his own abdication:‘If he, with all his wisdom, experience and knowledge, feels that he must lay down the burdens of state, how much more she must feel the same, given her inferiority to him in every respect and the fact that she is a woman, for which reason alone her ability, compared to a man’s, is as black compared with white!’ Even in times of peace, which had been few and far between, the complexity of governing the Low Countries was challenging. ‘A woman is never feared or respected as a man, whatever her rank.’ No doubt she felt this sincerely, but her political acumen was as good as any man’s.‘In time of war,’ she continued,‘in which these countries are more often engaged than is necessary, it is entirely impossible for a woman to govern them satisfactorily. All she can do is shoulder responsibility for mistakes committed by others and bear the odium for the crushing taxation then imposed on the people. She would have been unable to face the position at all, during this war, if the emperor had not been present.The Low Countries would have been lost, and she would have been blamed for it.’ As regent, she had managed to hold things together. But she would not stay under the new order. ‘However much she may love King Philip, the writer believes she need not stress how hard it would be for her, having served the emperor for 25 years, to start learning her ABC again now she is past 50. There is much youth about, with whose ways she is not in sympathy. Many people are corrupt, and the upright are few.’
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Her day was done. Like Charles himself, she wanted to go back to Spain, to live quietly there in the company of her sister Eleanor, the dowager queen of France. Her emotions, as she sat beside her brother that October day in Brussels, were more of relief than regret.
Mary Tudor might have recognised some of the assertions in her cousin’s letter, but there was one crucial difference. She was a queen regnant, not a substitute for a male ruler. She felt lonely and bereft by her husband’s departure, but she could not opt out of her role. In the physical sense, she was never alone, however isolated she might feel emotionally. Her household and political advisers were always there. And throughout the blisteringly hot summer of 1555, Elizabeth had been with her. Now she stayed on, ‘more in favour than she used to be’, reported Noailles,‘going every day to mass with the queen and often in her company’.
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This might be, he believed, because Philip favoured better treatment for Elizabeth, and had written to his wife on the subject.
How much of a genuine rapprochement there had been between the sisters at this point is hard to say. Mary needed comfort from somewhere and perhaps Elizabeth felt sorry for her. She had not participated in any subterfuge about the queen’s pregnancy and had never been called upon to express an opinion on the subject. She was there merely as an observer, albeit one who would have been seriously disadvantaged by the dubious privilege of becoming an aunt. But she also knew, once it was clear that there would be no occupant of the royal nursery, that her own position was definitely strengthened. There is no reason to be swayed by the imaginings of historical novelists that Philip had any
tendresse
for his sister-in-law; it would have been as obvious to him as to anyone else that Elizabeth was younger and more attractive than Mary. Philip’s interest was surely more political than personal. There was no point in demonising Elizabeth and creating even more ill feeling. She was the heiress presumptive by act of parliament and by her father’s will. And she was unmarried, which left scope for a match that would be advantageous to the Habsburg interests. Above all, she was not Mary Queen of Scots, a good Catholic, certainly, but a tool of the French.
Elizabeth stayed with Mary until mid-October 1555, when she obtained permission to take up residence again at Hatfield House.There, her faithful household staff awaited her, the imprudent but fiercely loyal Katherine Ashley, the only mother she had ever really known, Thomas Parry, Francis Verney, William St Loe and others whose loyalty to Mary was suspect. Freed from the tiresome restrictions of Sir Henry Bedingfeld, the princess resumed her linguistic studies, polishing her Greek with Roger Ascham, who had guided much of her education, and her Italian with Battista Castiglione. It was a far more agreeable existence than she had known since the first days of Mary’s reign.Yet there was no sense of gratitude. Elizabeth and those around her considered she had been grievously ill treated, but they were quite ready to go down the same perilous path of intrigue again if an opportunity presented itself.
Also taking his leave of Mary that autumn was Simon Renard, who, with Paget, had been the architect of her marriage. She knew, despite the fact that her husband did not share her view of the imperial ambassador, that she would miss him. In recommending him to Charles V, she wrote: ‘He was here with me through very dangerous times and … he showed himself during the marriage negotiations to be a most indispensable minister, inspired by the greatest desire to serve us and the greatest zeal for my affairs.’
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Now, she knew, she would need some of that zeal herself.
 
She had always been a devout woman. Each day she began with the same prayer: ‘Oh Lord my maker and redeemer, I thank thy goodness most humbly that thou hast preserved me all this night’.
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It is for her religious policy that she is now chiefly remembered, yet she was no theologian. Her own views she summed up in December 1554. Although she committed them to paper, in a document intended for her council, they read more like the ideas of someone thinking aloud.They begin with a reference to her cousin, Cardinal Pole, the visible face of the authority of the Church in Rome, and end with her own conscience. They are a revealing insight into the extent - and limits - of her spiritual preoccupations:
First, that such as had commission to talk with my Lord Cardinal at his first coming touching the goods of the Church should have recourse to him at the least once in a week, not only for putting those matters in execution as may be before Parliament but also to understand of him which ways might be best to bring to good effect those matters that have been begun concerning Religion, both touching good preachings. I wish that [they] may supply and overcome the evil preaching in time past and also to make a sure provision that none evil books shall either be printed, bought or sold, without just punishment.
 
 
I think it should be well done that the universities and churches of this Realm should be visited by such persons as my Lord Cardinal, with the rest of you, may be well assured to be worthy and sufficient persons to make a true and just account thereof, remitting the choice of them to him, and you.
 
Touching punishment of heretics, we thinketh it ought to be done without rashness, not leaving in the meanwhile to do justice to such as by learning would seem to deceive the simple. And the rest so to be used that the people might well perceive them not to be condemned without just oration, whereby they shall both understand the truth and beware to do the like. And especially within London I would wish none to be burnt without some of the Council’s presence and - both there and everywhere - good sermons at the same.
 
I verily believe that many benefices should not be in one man’s hands, but after such sort as every priest might look to his own charge and remain resident there, whereby they should have but one bond to discharge toward God, whereas now they have many: which I take to be the cause that in most parts of this Realm there is over much want of good preachers, and such as should with their doctrine overcome the evil diligence of the abused preachers in the time of the schisms, not only by their preaching, but also by their good example, without which, in my opinion, their sermons shall not so much profit as I wish. And like as their good example on their behalf shall undoubtedly do much good, so I accept my self bound on my behalf also to show such example in encouraging and maintaining those persons well doing their duty, not forgetting in the mean while to correct and punish them which do the contrary, [so] that it may be evident to all in this realm how I discharge my conscience therein, and minister true justice in the doing.
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