CHAPTER 21
The King … is little disposed to marry again, but some of his Council have thought it mete for us to urge him to it for the sake of his realm.1
AS HENRY MOURNED THE DEATH OF JANE SEYMOUR, THE FRENCH king and the emperor agreed upon a truce and began peace talks mediated by the pope. Now, with the growing threat of a Catholic offensive against him, the search for a new wife for Henry and a husband for Mary was used in an effort to forge an alliance that would keep France and the empire apart. “Since the King [Francis I] my brother, has already so great an amity with the Emperor, what amity should I have with him?” asked Henry. “I ask because I am not resolved to marry again unless the Emperor or King prefer my friendship to that which they have together.”2
Offers of marriage alliances were made to the empire and France for a match between Mary and either Dom Luis of Portugal or the duke of Orléans. Henry considered the prospect of marriage with the dowager duchess of Milan and for a time with Mary of Guise, though Henry delayed too long and in May she was betrothed to King James V of Scotland, thereby renewing the “Auld Alliance” between France and Scotland. At Nice in June, Charles and Francis came to terms, signing a ten-year truce, and some months later they pledged themselves to cooperate against the enemies of Christendom. Henry now moved to secure his position at home and look for new friends abroad.
Though publicly reconciled, Henry still regarded Mary and her supporters with suspicion. In the summer of 1538, Cromwell sent her a letter of warning. She had taken some “strangers” into her house. The incident had been relayed to the king in such a way to put her trustworthiness in doubt.3 Mary responded, “I fear it hath been reported to the worst, nevertheless I will promise you, with God’s help, from henceforth to refrain [from] it so utterly that of right none shall have cause to speak of.” She assured Cromwell that she would not lodge anyone in her house again and added that she would rather endure physical harm than lose even the smallest part of the king’s favor.4
Amid renewed fears of war, Henry sought to alienate Mary from the emperor and draw her more securely to him. At the end of August 1538, she was instructed to complain to the imperial ambassadors, Chapuys and Mendoza, about the emperor’s failure to conclude the Portuguese alliance and the miserable terms he had offered. Cromwell wrote to Mary outlining the supposed grievances that she was to present to the ambassadors when they visited her at Havering. Upon their arrival on the twenty-sixth, Mary dutifully protested about the “dissimulation” employed by the ambassadors, the offer of a miserly “dower,” and the emperor’s failure to show her the cousinly kindness and friendship she expected of him. “She was a woman only and could not help saying these things.” But “after so many overtures and fine words, nothing had been concluded.”5
Later Mary made clear her real feelings. She told Chapuys that she held the emperor in high esteem, as a “father and mother,” and “was so affectionately attached” to him “that it seemed almost impossible to her to have such an affection and love for a kinsman.” She did not believe what her father said about him, and she stood ready to do whatever he asked of her in the issue of marriage.6 Fearing for her safety, the ambassador raised again the prospect of escape. Mary was hesitant: “It might happen,” she said, that her father “might hereafter show greater consideration for her, or cause her to be more respected and better treated than she had been until now.” If that were the case, “she would much prefer remaining in England and conforming herself entirely to her father’s commands and wishes.”
When quizzed by Cromwell on her meeting with the ambassadors, Mary displayed some political astuteness, saying only that they had reiterated the emperor’s support for her and had urged her to remain “in the obedience and goodwill of my father.”
HENRY NOW TOOK action against the old Catholic families of royal Plantagenet blood, the Poles, Nevilles, and Courtenays, who had long been objects of suspicion for their loyalty to Katherine of Aragon and Mary. Reginald Pole had denounced Henry’s tyranny and heresy in the bitterest terms and, according to reports by the emperor’s agents, had hoped that the unrest in England might lead to “his marrying the princess himself.”7 As John Wroth wrote in a letter to Lord Lisle, who was in Calais on May 18, “Pole intended to have married my old lady Mary and betwixt them both should again arise the old doctrine of Christ.”8 It was such a union, or a rising in support of Mary against Edward’s succession, that the regime particularly feared.
In late August 1538, Sir Geoffrey Pole, the younger brother of Reginald, was arrested for treason and imprisoned in the Tower. Under interrogation he implicated his elder brother Henry Pole, Lord Montague; Sir Edward Neville, Montague’s brother-in-law; and Henry Courtenay, marquess of Exeter—the king’s cousin—in an alleged conspiracy that sought to deprive the king of his supremacy and marry Mary to Reginald Pole. By November 4, Exeter, his wife, Gertrude, and their twelve-year-old son, Edward, were committed to the Tower. Soon after, the elderly countess of Salisbury was interrogated and her house searched. She was convicted without trial of aiding and abetting her sons Henry and Reginald and of having “committed and p[er]petrated div[er]se and sundry other detestable and abominable treasons” and was imprisoned also.9 On Monday, December 9, Montague, Sir Edward Neville, and Exeter were tried and, having received unanimous guilty verdicts—on the basis of remarks such as “I like well the proceedings of Cardinal Pole”—were executed at Tower Hill.10
Two days after Christmas, Reginald Pole set out again secretly from Rome to rally the Catholic powers against “the most cruel and abominable tyrant” the king of England.11 In the Pact of Toledo in January 1539, Charles and Francis agreed to make no further agreements with England. It seemed that a crusade, termed the “Enterprise of England,” was about to begin.12 The pope was determined to “chastise the irreverence and extravagance of the King of England.”13 Counties were mustered, defenses were strengthened, and the country prepared for war. Meanwhile, diplomatic overtures were made to the Schmalkaldic League of German princes and any other rulers opposed to Charles or the pope.
On New Year’s Eve, Sir Nicholas Carew, a onetime royal favorite, was apprehended and questioned. A letter had allegedly been found at the home of the marchioness of Exeter that implicated him in the treason for which the marquess had been executed earlier in the month. Carew was tried and convicted on February 14, 1539, and beheaded on Tower Hill three weeks later. For Mary, the execution of so many of those who had supported her and her mother served as a sharp reminder of her father’s capacity for vengeance and cruelty. As Chapuys reflected, “It would seem that they want to leave her as few friends as possible.”14
WITH RENEWED FEARS of war against him, Henry was keen to secure alliances among the Lutheran princes in Germany. In mid-January 1539, the English ambassador Christopher Mont was sent to the duke of Saxony to discuss the prospect of a double match between Henry and the duke of Cleves’s eldest daughter, Anne, and between Mary and the young duke of Cleves himself.15 Cromwell instructed Mont to make clear that although Mary was “only the King’s natural daughter”—meaning she was not of “princely status”—she was “endowed, as all the world knows, with such beauty, learning and virtues, that when the rest was agreed, no man would stick for any part concerning her beauty and goodness.”16
Though the negotiations for a marriage with Mary and the young duke of Cleves came to nothing, by the autumn an alliance had been secured between Henry and Anne, the sister of Duke William of Cleves. The duke was a natural ally for Henry: a committed Habsburg opponent yet not a Lutheran. Agreement was reached in October, and, as negotiations continued for a match with Mary and another of the German princes, Anne of Cleves began her journey to England.
Meanwhile, Thomas Wriothesley, the earl of Southampton, was sent to Mary to instruct her that she should entertain the prospect of marriage with the Lutheran Duke Philip of Bavaria, who was in England in advance of Anne of Cleves’s arrival.17 Mary responded that although she knew the matter was of “great importance,” she “would wish and desire never to enter that kind of religion, but to continue still a maid during her life,” although she “committed herself to his majesty, her benign and merciful father.” On December 22, she agreed to meet the duke in the gardens of Westminster Abbey. Speaking partly in German with an interpreter and partly in Latin, the duke declared his intention to take Mary as his wife, if it were agreeable to her, and was bold enough to kiss her.18 When he left England in the new year, Duke Philip believed he would soon be returning to marry the princess. The French ambassador, Charles de Marillac, expected the wedding to take place within “ten or fifteen days,” and in December a draft treaty was drawn up.19
By January, word reached Rome that Mary had already married “without the advice or knowledge of the Emperor.” Chapuys sought desperately to learn if rumors of her marriage to a Lutheran duke were true. They were not. For Henry the negotiations had never been intended as anything more than a ploy to strengthen his hand against the emperor at a time when he feared a Catholic crusade against him.
Steps were also taken to suppress popular heresy and to appease conservatives at home. In the Parliament of 1539, the Act of Six Articles was passed, intended to head off the rising tide of heresy. It reaffirmed the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, with denial punishable by death by burning; rejected Communion in both kinds for the laity; required priests to remain celibate; and advocated the continued use of private Masses and auricular confession. Since the break with Rome, only John Lambert, an Anabaptist and one of Europe’s most radical heretics, had been burned for heresy. The passing of the Six Articles was intended to reassure Europe’s Catholic rulers that Henry, despite the schism, was fundamentally orthodox and they need not respond to the pope’s calls for a crusade against him.
In any event, no invasion came. The pope withheld the promised bull and recalled Cardinal Pole to Rome.20 France was unwilling to take action without a commitment from Charles, and the emperor, faced with the threat of the Ottoman Turks and the Lutherans in Germany and deteriorating relations with France, was not prepared to act against England.21 Instead, negotiations for an English alliance and a marriage with Mary were reopened with both sides.22 Yet as Marillac, the French ambassador, observed, “The King will not marry [his daughter] out of England, lest the crown of England should be claimed for her as legitimate by the Church and not of those born since the withdrawal of obedience to the Holy See, like the prince.”23 Moreover, as Henry made clear to Marillac, “I love my daughter well, but myself and honour more.” He would not declare Mary legitimate and refused to allow the invalidity of his first marriage to be doubted.24
Mary, then twenty-six, expressed her situation to one of her chamberwomen, an informant of Marillac. “It was folly to think that they would marry her out of England, or even in England,” she said, “for she would be, while her father lived, only Lady Mary, the most unhappy Lady in Christendom.”25