CHAPTER 33
ON SUNDAY, AUGUST 9, 1551, TWENTY-FOUR LORDS OF THE PRIVY Council met at Richmond, as Edward noted in his journal, to “commune of my sister Mary’s matter.” It was agreed that “it was not mete to be suffered any longer.” In July a new Anglo-French alliance had been concluded, with Edward betrothed to Henry II’s daughter Elizabeth. Dudley now felt confident to confront the issue of Mary’s disobedience.1 Mary’s senior household officers, Robert Rochester, Francis Englefield, and Edward Waldegrave, were all summoned before the Council at Hampton Court to receive instructions ordering the princess to conform.2 Upon their return to Mary’s residence, Copped Hall, near Epping in Essex, on Saturday the fifteenth, Mary forbade them to speak with her chaplains or her household and required them to return to London with a personal letter to the king:
I have by my servants received your most honourable letter, the contents whereof do not a little trouble me, and so much the more for that any of my said servants should move or attempt me in matters touching my soul…. Having for my part utterly refused heretofore to talk with them in such matters, trusted that your Majesty would have suffered me, your poor humble sister … to have used the accustomed Mass, which the King your father and mine, with all his predecessors did evermore use; wherein also I have been brought up from my youth, and thereunto my conscience doth not only bind me, which by no means will suffer me to think one thing and do another, but also the promise made to the Emperor, by your Majesty’s Council, was an assurance to me that in so doing I should not offend the laws, although they seem now to qualify and deny the thing.
Mary maintained that although the letter was signed by Edward’s hand, it was “nevertheless in my opinion not your Majesty’s in effect,” and she restated her belief that “it is not possible that your Highness can at these years be a judge in matters of religion.” She petitioned him “to bear with me as you have done, and not to think that by my doings or example any inconvenience might grow to your Majesty or your realm … rather than to offend God and my conscience, I offer my body at your will, and death shall be more welcome than life with a troubled conscience.”3When the household officers arrived back in London, they were each commanded separately to return to Mary and do what had been asked of them. They all refused, Rochester and Waldegrave saying that they would rather endure any punishment and Sir Francis Englefield declaring that he could find it “neither in his heart nor his conscience to do it.”4
ON AUGUST 28, the lord chancellor, Lord Rich; Sir Anthony Wingfield, comptroller of the king’s household; and Sir William Petre were sent to Mary at Copped Hall with instructions from the king:
His Majesty did resolutely determine it just, necessary and expedient that her Grace should not any ways use or maintain the private mass or any other manner of service than such as by the law of the realm is authorised or allowed.5
Mary treated their authority with contempt. She would hear no service than that left by her father, though when the king came of age and maturity of judgment he would find her conforming to his laws. Her chaplains might do as they wish, but if they read the new service she would leave her own house. Again Mary stated that she was prepared to die for her faith:
First she protested that to the King’s Majesty she was, is and ever will be his Majesty’s most humble and most obedient subject and poor sister, and would most willingly obey all his commandments in any thing (her conscience saved); yea, and would willingly and gladly suffer death to do his Majesty good, but rather than she will agree to use any other service than was used at the death of the late King her father, she would lay her head on a block and suffer death.6
Mary lamented, “You give me fair words, but your deeds will always be ill towards me.”
The commissioners then called the chaplains and the rest of the household and gave them “straight commandment upon pain of their allegiance, that neither the priests should from henceforth say any Mass or other Divine Service than that which is set forth by the laws of the realm.” As their subsequent report to the Council stated, “Her chaplains, after some talk, promised to obey all the King’s Majesty’s commandment signified by us.” As the men were leaving, Mary called out that she needed her comptroller, Robert Rochester, to be returned to her, adding that since his departure “I take the account myself of my expenses, and how many loaves of bread be made a bushel of wheat … my father and mother never brought me [up] with baking and brewing, and to be plain with you I am weary of mine office, and therefore, if my Lords will send my officer home they shall do me pleasure.”7 But the Council ignored Mary’s plea and sent Englefield, Waldegrave, and Rochester first to the Fleet and then to the Tower.
With the situation at a deadlock, security around the princess was tightened. Edward recorded in his journal that “pinnaces were prepared to see that there should be no conveyance overseas of the Lady Mary, secretly done.” Meanwhile, the lord chancellor, the lord chamberlain, the vice chamberlain, and Secretary Petre “should see by all means they could whether she used the mass, and if she did that the laws should be executed on her chaplains.”8
IN OCTOBER 1551, Henry II of France declared war on Charles V with the intention of recapturing Italy and securing European supremacy. The renewal of Habsburg-Valois hostilities brought an increased fear of imperial intervention in England. Mary of Hungary, Charles’s sister, was certain that England would join France in the war and so proposed an invasion of England to gain a strong port from which to defend the Netherlands and to place Mary on the throne.9
With her fortune ever tied to events in Europe, pressure eased on Mary. When Mary of Guise, the dowager queen of Scotland, visited Edward for several days in October, Mary was invited to court “to accompany and entertain” her, while Edward sent his own message, that he would enjoy the pleasure of Mary’s company. Once again Mary pleaded ill health to avoid being put under religious pressure by her brother.10 Over the next few months the conciliatory overtures continued. In March 1552, Rochester, Englefield, and Waldegrave were released from the Tower and returned to Mary’s household. Two months later, Mary rode through London to St. John’s “with a goodly company of gentlemen and gentlewomen” and went by barge to Greenwich to visit her brother.11
In April, Edward had written in his chronicle, “I feel sick of the measles and the smallpox.” He made a quick recovery, but by the winter of 1552 he was seriously ill once more, his body racked by a hacking cough. It was clear that the king was suffering from “consumption”—tuberculosis. The Council made no further overt attempts to suppress Mary’s Masses. With Edward’s health deteriorating, it was prudent to conciliate one who stood so near to the throne.