CHAPTER 39
A WEEK BEFORE MARY’S CEREMONIAL ENTRY INTO LONDON, JOHN Dudley, the duke of Northumberland, and his accomplices, Sir John Gates and Sir Thomas Palmer, were brought back to London under heavy guard.1 Despite a proclamation ordering citizens to allow the prisoners to pass by peacefully, the mounted men at arms struggled to hold back the large crowds.2 As they made their way to the Tower from Shoreditch, Londoners filled the streets to watch, throwing stones and calling out “Death to the traitors!” and “Long live the true queen!” Pausing at Bishopsgate, the earl of Arundel made Northumberland take off his hat and scarlet cloak to make him less conspicuous among the group of prisoners. For the rest of the journey to the Tower, he rode bareheaded through the streets, his cap in his hand.3
Two weeks later the duke was tried and condemned to death. During his time in the Tower he was assailed by remorse for his sins, begging to be pardoned and professing his adherence to Catholicism: “I do faithfully believe this is the very right and true way, out of which true religion you and I have been seduced this xvj years past, by the false and erroneous preaching of the new preachers.”4 His apostasy did not save him. He went to the block with Gates and Palmer in front of a huge crowd on August 22.5
None of the other July rebels was executed, and both Lady Jane Grey and her husband, Guildford Dudley, remained in the Tower in honorable imprisonment. The emperor urged Mary to act against them, but she “could not be induced to consent that she should die.”6 Jane had written a long confession explaining that she had known nothing of the plan to declare her queen until three days before she was taken to the Tower and had never given any consent to the duke’s intrigues and plots. Upon the proclamation of Mary’s accession, she had, she claimed, gladly given up the royal dignity as she knew the right belonged to Mary.7 Mary acknowledged her submission and showed a spirit of temperance toward her. Her mother, the duchess of Suffolk, was a long-standing acquaintance and had spent Christmas with Mary the previous year. “My conscience,” Mary declared to the ambassador, “will not permit me to have her put to death.”8
On July 31, upon the petition of his wife, Frances, Mary released the duke of Suffolk from the Tower, even though he had been strongly implicated in Northumberland’s coup to place Jane on the throne. As Renard reported, “many who judge her actions impartially, praise her clemency and moderation in tempering the rigour of justice against those who plotted her death and disinheritance, in staying their punishment, and, moreover, in forgiving their misdeeds and extending her grace and mercy to them.”9
FIVE DAYS AFTER Mary had taken possession of the Tower and a month after the king’s death, the coffin of the late Edward VI was carried from Whitehall to Westminster Abbey. Mary had initially expressed her intention to have him buried “for her own peace of conscience” according to the “ancient ceremonies and prayers” of the Catholic Church, fearing that if she “appeared to be afraid” it would make her subjects, particularly the Lutherans, “become more audacious” and “proclaim that she had not dared to do her own will.”10 But in a confidential memorandum, Renard advised caution: if Mary inaugurated her reign in this fashion, she would “render herself odious and suspect.” Burying Edward, who had lived and died a Protestant, with Catholic rites might “cause her Majesty’s subjects to waver in their loyal affection.”11 Mary agreed to compromise. On August 9, while Mary and her ladies heard a Requiem Mass for the repose of his soul in a private chapel in the Tower, Edward was buried in the abbey in a Protestant service conducted by Thomas Cranmer, the archbishop of Canterbury.12
Outside the Tower, there was evidence that religious change had already begun. Even before Mary had reached London, altars and crucifixes had started to reappear in the city’s churches, and Matins and Evensong were being recited “not by commandment but by the devotion of the people.” As the chronicler Wriothesley described, at St. Paul’s “the work that was broken down of stone, where the high altar stood, was begun to be made up again with brick.” And on Saint Bartholomew’s Day, August 24, a Latin Mass was said there.13
But amid such demonstrations of enthusiasm for the old religion, violent disturbances erupted across London. On Sunday, August 13, during a sermon at St. Paul’s Cross, Gilbert Bourne, chaplain to the bishop of London, was “pulled out of the pulpit by vagabonds” and “one threw his dagger at him.”14 The following Sunday, crowds there were met by the captain of the Guard and more than two hundred guardsmen to protect the preacher. Defamatory pamphlets exhorting Protestants to take up arms against Mary’s government littered the streets. “Nobles and gentlemen favoring the word of God” were asked to overthrow the “detestable papists,” especially “the great devil” Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester.15 A number of leading Protestant figures, including John Bradford, the prebendary of St. Paul’s, and John Rogers, the canon of St. Paul’s, were arrested, and leading reformist bishops such as John Hooper, bishop of Worcester and Gloucester, and Hugh Latimer, bishop of Worcester, were imprisoned some weeks later. In September, Thomas Cranmer, the archbishop of Canterbury, was imprisoned for treason for his role in Lady Jane’s attempted coup.
In mid-August, as violence and alarm spread, Mary issued her first proclamation, intended to avoid “the great inconvenience and dangers” that had arisen in times past through the “diversity of opinions in questions of religion”:
Her Majesty being presently by the only goodness of God settled in the just possession of the imperial crown of this realm and other dominions thereunto belonging, cannot now hide that religion which God and the world knoweth she hath ever professed from her infancy hitherto, which her majesty is minded to observe and maintain for herself by God’s grace during her time, so doth her highness much desire and would be glad the same were all of her subjects quietly and charitably embraces. And yet she doth signify unto all her Majesty’s said loving subjects that of her most gracious disposition and clemency her highness mindeth not to compel any her said subjects thereunto unto such time as further order by common assent may be taken therein.
Mary called on her subjects “to live in quiet sort and Christian charity” and told them that further religious change would be settled by “common consent,” by act of Parliament.16 In the midst of popular unrest and fear of change, Mary had responded with moderation and pragmatism.
YET WHILE MARY publicly temporized, she made secret steps toward restoring Catholicism. In August, she addressed a private letter to Pope Julius III, petitioning him to remit all the ecclesiastical censures against England that had been imposed when Henry broke with Rome. As she wrote to Henry Penning, the pope’s chamberlain, she had “always been most obedient and most affectionate towards the Apostolic See and his Holiness had no more loving daughter than herself.” She declared that within a few days she “hoped to be able to show it openly to the whole world” and would first need to “repeal and annul by Act of Parliament many perverse laws made by those who ruled before her.”17
On learning of Mary’s accession, the pope had appointed as cardinal and papal legate Reginald Pole, the son of Mary’s former governess Margaret Pole, in order to arrange the reconciliation of England to the Catholic Church. Pole began petitioning for an immediate and unconditional return to Roman obedience, for “The Queen, or at least England, was assuredly [ship]wrecked when she threw herself overboard … into the sea of this century.” As he had “drawn a picture of the danger; her Majesty will judge whether it is time to deliberate, or rather to act as ordained and prescribed by divine and human counsel.”18 With Parliament summoned for the beginning of October, Pole demanded that the issue of papal supremacy and monastic property be quickly resolved and on August 10 launched a series of exhortations to the queen, begging her to end the schism without delay.
Yet Mary had come to realize the scale of her task. On September 11, she wrote to the cardinal of Imola, informing him that no legatine mission should be sent until the time was more propitious. She was aware of the dangers of introducing religious changes before they could be sanctioned by Parliament. For now she dissembled, maintaining that she did not want to coerce people into going to Mass. As Mary declared to Renard, “she had so far found no better expedient than to leave each free as to the religion he would follow…. If some held to the old, and others to the new, they should not be interfered with or constrained to follow any other course until the coming Parliament should decide by law.”19 There was, however, one notable exception.
WITHIN TWO WEEKS of Mary’s entry into London, Renard reported that he had raised with the queen the presence at court of the Lady Elizabeth, who might, out of “ambition or being persuaded thereunto, conceive some dangerous design and put it to execution, by means which it would be difficult to prevent, as she was clever and sly.”20 Writing to Mary in late August, the imperial ambassadors, M. de Courrières, M. de Thoulouse, and Renard, advised her “not to be too ready to trust the Lady Elizabeth” and urged her
to reflect that she now sees no hope of coming to the throne, and has been unwilling to yield about religion…. Moreover, it will appear that she is only clinging to the new religion out of policy, in order to win over and make use of its adepts in case she decided to plot. A mistake may perhaps be made in attributing this intention to her, but at this stage it [is] safer to forestall than to be forestalled and to consider all possible results; for there are clear enough indications.21
Aware of such suspicions against her and “perceiving that the Queen did not show her as kindly a countenance as she could wish,” Elizabeth asked Mary for a private audience. They met at the beginning of September at Richmond, in one of the galleries of the palace; Mary was accompanied by one of her ladies, Elizabeth by one of her maids. Falling on her knees before the queen, Elizabeth wept, saying she knew the queen was “not well disposed towards her, and she knew no other cause except religion.” She begged for understanding. She acted out of ignorance, not obstinacy: she had never been taught the doctrine of the ancient religion. She asked for books so that “having read them she might know if her conscience would allow her to be persuaded; or that a learned man might be sent to her, to instruct her in the truth.”
Glad to see such “good resolves,” Mary granted her request.22 Meanwhile, as she had promised, Elizabeth attended Mass in the Chapel Royal on September 8, the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin. It was clearly under duress. She had tried to excuse herself on grounds of ill health and had complained loudly of a stomachache all the way to church.23 It was a rerun of the earlier clashes between Mary and Edward, when he had implored her to submit to his authority and accept the Protestant changes. But unlike Mary, Elizabeth had no desire to be a martyr.
No one, least of all Mary, was fooled by Elizabeth’s display of compliance. Within days the imperial ambassadors were reporting that “last Sunday the Lady Elizabeth did not go to mass,” adding “the Queen has sent us word that she has half-turned already from the good road upon which she had begun to travel.”24 Mary continued to press Elizabeth as to the purity of her motives, questioning whether she really believed, as Catholics did, “concerning the holy sacrament,” or whether she “went to mass in order to dissimulate, out of fear or hypocrisy.” Elizabeth replied that she was contemplating making a public declaration “that she went to mass and did as she did because her conscience prompted and moved her to it, that she went of her own free will and without fear, hypocrisy or dissimulation.”25
Although she continued to doubt Elizabeth’s sincerity, Mary allowed her sister to remain at court and to attend her coronation. But underlying tensions remained. Within weeks Renard reported that Mary was considering barring her from the succession on account of her “heretical opinions and illegitimacy, and characteristics in which she resembled her mother.” As Anne Boleyn “had caused great trouble in the kingdom,” she feared her daughter might do the same “and particularly that she might imitate her mother in being a French partisan.” She told Renard that it “would burden her conscience too heavily to allow a bastard to succeed.”26 Mary increasingly suspected that Elizabeth went to Mass only “out of hypocrisy; she had not a single servant or maid of honour who was not a heretic, she talked every day with heretics and lent an ear to all their evil designs.”27
Finally, in early December, Elizabeth asked for permission to leave court. The sisters parted on affectionate terms. Mary gave her a coif of rich sables, and en route to Hatfield, Elizabeth stopped to write to Mary asking her for copes, chasubles, chalices, and other ornaments for her chapel. The queen ordered all these things to be sent to her, “as it was for God’s service and Elizabeth wished to bear witness to the religion she had declared she meant to follow.”28