CHAPTER 32
ON MARCH 15, 1551, MARY ARRIVED IN LONDON, RIDING TO HER house at St. John’s, Clerkenwell. Fifty knights and gentlemen in velvet coats and chains of gold rode before her; some four hundred gentlemen and ladies followed behind. As Henry Machyn the London diarist recorded, each carried a “pair of beads of black”—a rosary. It was a dramatic display of Catholic defiance and the scale of Mary’s power and support.1 By the time she reached the gates of the city, there were more than four hundred people in her train. It was, in Machyn’s assessment, the greatest demonstration of loyalty in living memory: “The people ran five or six miles out of town and were marvellously overjoyed to see her, showing clearly how much they love her.”2
The following day, Mary was met unceremoniously at the court gate at Whitehall and led into the Presence Chamber, where the young king and his Council waited to receive her. She was charged with disobedience and ordered to obey. In his journal, Edward described the meeting:
The Lady Mary my sister came to me at Westminster, where after salutations she was called with my Council into a chamber, where was declared how long I had suffered her Mass [against my will; crossed out], in hope of her reconciliation and how now, being no hope, which I perceived by her letters, except I saw some short amendment, I could not bear it. She answered that her soul was God[’s], and her faith she would not change, nor dissemble her opinion with contrary doings. It was said I constrained not her faith, but willed her [not as a King to rule; inserted] but as a subject to obey. And that her example might breed too much inconvenience.3
When Edward warned her of the dangers of continuing to practice the old religion, Mary put it to him again that he was not yet old enough to be making decisions, assuring him “Riper age and experience will teach Your Majesty much more yet.” This time Edward snapped back, “You also may have somewhat to learn. None are too old for that.” Mary reasoned that even if there had been no assurance to hear Mass, she hoped that, as her brother, he “would have shown her enough respect to allow her to continue in the observance of the old religion, and to prevent her from being troubled in any way.” Did he want “to take away her life rather than the old religion, in which she desired to live and die?” Edward responded that “he wished for no such sacrifice.”
The meeting broke up unresolved. Mary left beseeching Edward not to listen to those who spoke ill of her, “whether about religion or anything else,” and assuring him that he would always find her his obedient sister, something, Edward replied, “he had never doubted.”4
Soon after Mary’s visit to court, two prominent Catholics, Sir Richard Morgan and Sir Clement Smith, were summoned before the Council, accused of having heard Mass two or three days earlier in the princess’s house at St. John’s, Clerkenwell.5 Days later, Sir Anthony Browne was questioned about the same offense and admitted that he had heard Mass “twice or thrice at the New Hall, and Romford, as my Lady Mary was coming hither about ten days past, he had heard mass.”6 All three men were imprisoned in Fleet Prison on Farringdon Street.7 Some weeks later Francis Mallet, Mary’s principal chaplain and almoner, was arrested. He was condemned for reoffending and for persuading others to embrace his “naughty opinion” and imprisoned in the Tower.8
Mary immediately wrote to the Council, claiming that “he [Mallet] did it by my commandment … none of my chaplains should be in danger of the law for saying mass in my house” and asking them to “set him at liberty.”9 The Council rejected her appeal: “To relieve him would take the fault upon yourself; we are sorry to perceive your grace so ready to be a defence to one that the King’s law doth condemn.”10
ON MARCH 19, Charles V threatened war if Mary were not given freedom of worship. Edward noted the event in his journal: “The Emperor’s ambassador came with a short message from his master, of war if I would not suffer his cousin, the princess, to use her mass. To this no answer was given at this time.”11
Meanwhile, a diplomatic row broke out at the imperial court in Brussels between Charles and the resident English ambassador, Sir Richard Morison, an outspoken evangelical, who argued on behalf of the English government that envoys to Brussels should have the right to exercise their evangelical beliefs. With Jehan Scheyfve continuing to assert that a promise had been made that Mary “might freely retain the ancient religion in such sort as her father left it in this realm … until the King should be of more years,”12 diplomatic relations reached a crisis point. Edward insisted that he would not give way on a matter “that touched his honour as head of the family.” He would “spend his life, and all he had, rather than agree and grant to what he knew certainly to be against the truth.”13 The bishops Thomas Cranmer, Nicholas Ridley, and John Ponet instead advised the king that “to give licence to sin was to sin; to suffer and wink at it for a time might be borne.” The Council now feared that the emperor might take action as he had threatened and that the whole realm might be in peril. They persuaded Edward to send Nicholas Wotton, dean of Canterbury, to the imperial court to try to reason with the emperor. He was instructed to make it clear that no assurance or promise had ever been made by the king regarding Mary’s right to hear Mass but that he was only “to spare the execution of the laws for a time, until he saw some proof of her amendment.”
As pressure came to bear on Mary once more, the emperor challenged Wotton:
Ought it not to suffice you that ye spill your own souls, but that ye have a mind to force others to lose theirs too? My cousin, the Princess, is evil handled among you; her servants plucked from her, and she still cried to leave Mass, to forsake her religion in which her mother, her grandmother, and all her family, have lived and died. I will not suffer it.
Wotton replied that Mary had been well treated when he left England and he had heard of no change, but the emperor insisted:
Yes by St. Mary … of late they handle her evil and therefore say you hardly to them, I will not suffer her to be evil handled by them. I will not suffer it. Is it not enough that mine aunt, her mother, was evil entreated by the King that dead is, but my cousin must be worse ordered by councillors now.
Though Mary had “a King to her father, and hath a King to her brother, she is only a subject and must obey the law,” Wotton countered. “A gentle law I tell you!” snorted the emperor. Wotton then asked if Sir Thomas Chamberlain, English ambassador to Mary of Hungary, might be permitted to have the service of the Book of Common Prayer in his house, at which Charles exploded, “English service in Flanders! Speak not of it. I will suffer none to use any doctrine or service in Flanders that is not allowed of the Church.” He ended the audience by saying that if Mary were not allowed her Mass, he would provide her with a remedy. And as Charles made clear: “We would rather she had died ten years ago than see her waver now; but we believe her to be so constant that she would prefer a thousand deaths rather than renounce her faith. If death were to undertake her for this cause, she would be the first martyr of royal blood to die for our holy faith, and for this earn glory in the better life.”14 The emperor had raised the prospect that Mary might be sacrificed as a Catholic martyr.