CHAPTER 30
They are wicked and wily in their actions, and particularly malevolent towards me, I must not wait till the blow falls.1
—MARY TO VAN DER DELFT, MAY 2, 1550
AT THE END OF APRIL 1550, MARY SUMMONED VAN DER DELFT TO her residence at Woodham Walter Manor, near Maldon in Essex. She was in despair and had resolved to leave the country. “If my brother were to die,” she told the ambassador, “I would be far better out of the kingdom, because as soon as he were dead, before the people knew it, they would despatch me too.” She feared what was to come:
When they send me orders forbidding me the mass, I shall expect to suffer as I suffered once during my father’s lifetime; they will order me to withdraw thirty miles from any navigable river or sea-port, and will deprive me of my confidential servants, and having reduced me to the utmost destitution, they will deal with me as they please. But I will rather suffer death than stain my conscience…. I am like a little ignorant girl, and I care neither for my goods nor for the world, but only for God’s service and my conscience. I know not what to say; but if there is peril in going and peril in staying, I must choose the lesser of two evils…. I would willingly stay were I able to live and serve God as I have done in the past; which is what I have always said. But these men are so changeable that I know not what to say. What say you, Mr Ambassador?2
Mary, then thirty-four, had been contemplating escape for some time. In September the previous year, before Somerset’s fall, she had sent the emperor a ring and a message that she wished to flee England and seek refuge with him.3 Charles had responded cautiously, declaring it a matter in which Mary “should not be encouraged” because of the difficulties of getting her out of the realm and the cost of supporting her at the imperial court.4 Now, faced with her continued persecution and her ever-shriller protests, Charles cautiously agreed to support her in her wish, “for we have the best of reasons and have done all we could do to protect our cousin’s person and conscience.” He had held back as long as possible from “this extreme measure” but agreed it had “now become imperative to resort to because of the attitude adopted in England.”5
It was arranged that Mary’s escape should coincide with a change of imperial ambassador in mid-May. Van der Delft had been in England for six years, and his recall would not cause suspicion. Once he had formally taken leave, his ship would be diverted to waters off the Essex coast for long enough to meet a boat bringing Mary from Maldon. But with the plan set, fear of renewed popular unrest led to extra watches being placed on the roads near Woodham Walter. There was no chance of her passing unrecognized; another scheme had to be devised.6
On the evening of Monday, June 30, 1550, three imperial warships arrived off the coast near Maldon under the command of a Dutchman, Cornelius Scepperus, admiral of the imperial fleet. The next day, Jehan Dubois, secretary to the imperial embassy in London, rowed ashore disguised as a grain merchant. The plan, devised over the previous months, would see Mary escape under cover of darkness from Woodham Walter to the sea two miles away. She would then be rowed out to the waiting ships and taken to the Low Countries and the court of Charles’s sister, the regent Mary of Hungary.
In the early hours of July 2, Dubois arrived in Maldon, but there was no one to meet him. He sent an urgent, detailed dispatch to Robert Rochester, one of Mary’s senior household officers:
Sir … I arrived here this morning in a six-oared boat. Yesterday I sent my brother, Peter Marchant, to announce in this town that we had brought the corn, and were coming with the next tide; and this I did in order that you might the sooner be advised of my arrival. However, as far as I know, there was nobody there to take the corn or receive the said Peter. Therefore I am obliged to write now to point out to you that there is danger in delay, especially as M. Scepperus is now coming to Stansgate with a warship, and near Harwich there are three other ships waiting and moreover four larger ships are out to sea. Consider therefore whether we must not hurry. There is yet another reason as well: the water will not be as high tomorrow night as tonight, and will be lower every night until next moon, and we now have the advantage that the tide serves our purpose late at night and towards morning, that is, about two o’clock. By that hour or immediately afterwards all ought to be here, so that we may be on our way while the tide is still rising … I will sell my corn at once, and be ready tonight. Please let me know your intentions…. I must add that I see no better opportunity than the present one; and this undertaking is passing through so many hands that it is daily becoming more difficult, and I fear it may not remain secret. However I will yield to a better opinion, and I pray God to inspire you now; for the Emperor has done all he could.
Hours later, Dubois and Rochester met on the pretext of trading grain. Though Dubois expected them to confirm the final details of the plan, Rochester called the whole scheme into question. He said he thought Mary’s imminent flight was unnecessary, as she would be “in no way molested before the end of the Parliament that was to meet the following Michaelmas at the earliest,” at which point she would have the advantage of being at her house at St. Osyth, also in Essex, which had a garden from which it was easy to reach the open sea. It was, he argued, simply too dangerous for Mary to attempt her escape with a watch posted on every road near Maldon. “If you understand me,” Rochester explained, “what I say is not that my Lady does not wish to go, but that she wishes to go if she can.” Dubois demanded clarification. “The thing was now a question of Yes or No.” A decision had to be made. The men of Harwich had seen their ships, and it would not be long before the Council was informed of their presence.
That evening Dubois rode in secret to visit Mary. Rochester voiced his concerns again, and the imperial secretary grew frustrated. “The whole business was so near being discovered that it was most improbable that it could be kept secret.” Rochester replied, “For the love of God, do not say that to my Lady! She is a good woman and really wants to go; but neither she nor you see what I see and know. Great danger threatens us!” As Mary stowed her possessions into hop sacks, she expressed fear as to “how the Emperor would take it if it turned out to be impossible to go now.” She would not be ready until the day after next. On Friday morning, just after the watch retired, she would leave her house on the pretext of going “to amuse herself and purge her stomach by the sea.”
As the plan was agreed, word came that the bailiffs of Maldon wished to impound Dubois’s boat on suspicion that it was associated with the warship at Stansgate. According to Dubois, Mary started to panic, asking “What shall we do? What shall become of me?” She feared “how the Emperor would take it if it turned out impossible to go now, after I have so often importuned his Majesty on the subject.” Dubois urged that they should take Mary immediately, but Rochester declared that it would be impossible: the watch was going to be doubled that night and men would be posted on the church tower. At this point Mary became hysterical, repeatedly shrieking “But what is to become of me?” It was decided that Rochester would contact her again within ten or twelve days with an exact date when they would be ready to put the plan into action. But no further attempt was made. Dubois suspected “that the Comptroller had made out the situation at Maldon to be more dangerous than it was in reality.”7
To have fled would have been to gamble. If Edward died when Mary was abroad, she would have no hope of succeeding. If she stayed, she might be deprived of her household and be left to face dangers alone. There was both “peril in going and peril in staying.” Having set the plan into motion, Mary procrastinated, then changed her mind. She accepted that to win her rightful throne and restore Catholicism, she needed to be in England. She resolved to stay and fight.