CHAPTER 40
As to the establishment of the Queen upon her throne, the preparations for the coronation are going forward apace for the first of October.1
—IMPERIAL AMBASSADORS TO THE EMPEROR, SEPTEMBER 9, 1553
FROM THE EARLIEST WEEKS OF HER REIGN, PLANS WERE PUT into place for Mary’s coronation.2 Fabrics and cloth were purchased and delivered, clothing was made ready, the nobility was summoned, and triumphal pageants were composed. By mid-September, the citizens of London had begun decorating the city; arches, scaffolds, and scenery for the pageants were erected and painted, and wooden rails were installed along the coronation procession route to hold back the crowds.3 At Westminster Abbey a great stage had been constructed for the crowning, and banners hung all around. It was as it had been for countless coronations before.
Yet amid the following of “old customs” there existed unease.4 Though everyone had resolved to make the ceremonies “very splendid and glorious,” the manner and form of the ceremony were uncertain. There were no precedents for the crowning of a queen regnant, let alone a Catholic bastard.5 The fourteenth-century guide Liber Regalis and the “Little Device,” first used for the coronation of Richard III, outlined only the procession and ceremony of a queen consort. And after weeks of religious unrest and plotting in the capital, there were fears of further violence.
As Renard reported, “arquebusers, arrows and other weapons were being collected in various houses,” giving rise to fears that during the coronation procession “some attempt might be made against [the Queen’s] person.”6 A number of former Edwardian councillors called for unprecedented change, arguing that the coronation should be postponed until after Parliament had met and confirmed Mary’s legitimacy.7 The imperial ambassadors believed that such “novelty” was intended to “cast doubts upon and put in question the Queen’s right to the throne, to render her more dependant on [her] council and Parliament than she should be [and] bridle her so that she cannot marry a foreigner.” It was a proposal born of the fears raised by accession of the country’s first female sovereign, and one that Mary rejected outright.8
The coronation had been set for October 1, a Sunday, according to tradition. Although the 1552 Act of Uniformity remained in force and Mary was to be crowned supreme head of the Church, the coronation ceremony was to proceed as a full Catholic Mass. Recognizing the potential illegitimacy of the ceremony, Mary requested that Pole, the papal legate, absolve her and her bishops on the day of the coronation so that they might be able to say Mass and administer the sacraments without sin.9 Moreover, concerned that the oils to be used in the anointing, which had been consecrated by an Edwardian minister, “may not be such as they ought,” she asked the imperial ambassadors to write to the bishop of Arras, Charles’s chief minister in Brussels, to secretly prepare specially consecrated oil for her anointing.10 The conservative Bishop Gardiner, recently freed from the Tower, was chosen to perform the rite in place of Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, who remained imprisoned. With the amendments made, all was ready for the pageantry to begin.
ON THURSDAY, September 28, Mary departed St. James’s Palace for Whitehall, accompanied by her sister, Elizabeth, now heir apparent, and their former stepmother Anne of Cleves. At Westminster, Mary boarded her barge and was escorted down the Thames to the Tower by the lord mayor, the aldermen of London, and the companies, their boats festooned with banners and flying streamers.11 As the flotilla approached the Tower, a salute was fired. At the Watergate, Mary thanked the city officials, and then, amid a cacophony of trumpets, musicians, singers, and the pounding of cannon, she entered the Tower.12
On Saturday, the eve of the coronation, a symbolic chivalric ritual dating back to the fourteenth century was performed. Fifteen young nobles were created knights of the bath. A ceremony of naked bathing, shaving, and prayer marked their coming of age as warriors.13 It was a male rite of passage, an exercise in chivalric kingship, and a means of rewarding loyalty and service to the Crown. Many of those given the honor were those of Mary’s servants who had acted in her defense in the succession crisis, men such as Sir Henry Jerningham and Robert Rochester. Not for the last time, Mary’s gender necessitated the redefining of ritual as the lord steward, the earl of Arundel, deputized in Mary’s place. On Saturday morning the chosen gentlemen plunged naked into a wooden bath in the chapel of the Tower before reemerging to kiss Arundel’s shoulder.
At three that afternoon, as guns fired from the ramparts and bells rang from the churches all around, Mary departed the Tower for the coronation procession. The event, another tradition dating from the reign of Richard II, was an opportunity for Londoners to see their sovereign before the coronation the following day. First, the queen’s messengers rode out from the courtyard of the Tower, followed by trumpeters, esquires of the body, the knights of the bath, heralds, bannerets, and members of the council and clergy, some in gold, some in silver, their horses covered in plate. Then, in rank order, came the Garter knights, the rest of the nobility, the foreign ambassadors, each paired with an Englishman, merchants, soldiers, and knights; behind them the queen’s personal entourage, the earl of Sussex, her Chief Server, carrying the queen’s hat and cloak; and “two ancient knights with old-fashioned hats, powdered on their heads, disguised,” representing, as was traditional, the dukes of the former English territories of Normandy and Guienne. Gardiner and Paulet followed with the seal and mace; the lord mayor in crimson velvet carrying the golden scepter; the sergeants at arms; and the earl of Arundel bearing Mary’s sword.14
Then came Mary herself, riding in an open litter pulled by six horses in white trappings almost to the ground. Official accounts describe her as “richly apparelled with mantle and kirtle of cloth of gold … all things thereunto appertaining, according to the precedents.”15 Mary was dressed as a queen consort. On her head she wore a gold tinsel cloth and a jeweled crown, which was described as being “so massy and ponderous that she was fain to bear up her head with her hands.”16 Around Mary’s litter rode four ladies on horseback: Edward Courtenay’s mother, the marchioness of Exeter; and the wives of the duke of Norfolk, the earl of Arundel, and Sir William Paulet. Next came the carriage carrying Elizabeth and Anne of Cleves; then lines of peereses, ladies, and gentlewomen, some in chariots, some on horseback, and the royal henchmen dressed in the Tudor colors of green and white.17
For a mile and a half, the grand procession wound its way through the graveled streets of London. The aldermen of the city stood within the rails; behind them the multitudes, “people resorted out of all parts of the realm, to see the same, that the like have not been seen before.”18 The procession was, Renard reported, “a memorable and solemn one, undisturbed by any noise or tumult.”19
From the Tower to Temple Bar, Mary was greeted by an array of civic pageantry. At Fenchurch Street, Genoese merchants had created a triumphal arch decorated with verses praising Mary’s accession: as she passed, a boy dressed as a girl and carried on a throne by men and “giants” delivered a salutation.20 At Cornhill, the Florentines paid tribute to Mary’s triumph over Northumberland’s forces by invoking an image of Judith, the Israelite heroine, saving her people from Holofernes, the Assyrian leader, and of Tomyris, who had led her people to victory against the all-conquering Cyrus. In the pageant, an angel clothed in green, trumpet in hand, was strung up at the highest point between four gigantic “pictures.” As the angel put the trumpet to his mouth, a trumpeter hidden within the pageant “did sound as if the noise had come from the angel, to the great marvelling of many ignorant persons.”21 In Cornhill and Cheap, the conduits ran with wine and pageants were performed in which people stood singing verses in praise of their queen.
At St. Paul’s, Mary was addressed by the recorder of London and the chamberlain before being presented with a purse containing a thousand marks of gold, a gesture of goodwill “which she most thankfully received.”22 At the school in St. Paul’s churchyard, the playwright John Heywood, sitting under a vine, delivered an oration in Latin and English; and at the dean of St. Paul’s Gate, choristers held burning tapers that gave off “most sweet perfumes.”23 At Ludgate, minstrels played and children sang songs of joy. Then, passing through Temple Bar by early evening, Mary finally reached Whitehall and took leave of the lord mayor. The following day she would be crowned queen of England.