Bloody Mary (57 page)

Mary’s domestic unhappiness did not keep her from getting on with the political business which had brought Philip to England. The power to move war and peace was of course entirely in her hands; the opinions of her councilors were, in the strictest sense, gratuitous. But in practice she needed their concurrence in order to wage war effectively, and in her campaign to gain that concurrence she was spurred, Noailles heard, by the most cogent of incentives. Unless she succeeded in swaying the Council as she had promised to do, Philip told Mary, he would never again return to her.

Mary opened her campaign by summoning the chief councilors—those designated as an inner or select Council—to her chamber. There, in Philip’s presence, she made them a speech, beginning with the biblical arguments which compelled her to do her husband’s will and going on to give a summary of European politics. The French menace was already on the point of driving Philip’s forces out of Italy, she said; left unchecked, they would in time turn on England. Unless English troops and money were forthcoming, backed by a declaration of war, the Council would have a far worse crisis on its hands later on. A French informer who was present when Mary spoke told Noailles how impressive she was. Her arguments could not have been improved on for eloquence or subtle reasoning, he said, but the councilors were adamant. One of them, Mason, declared he would rather die than see England declare war, while others adopted the ominous view that “their intention and theit duty was to have no respect either for king or for queen, but solely for the public good of the kingdom.”
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It was obvious, as Philip wrote to Granvelle in mid-April, that he and Mary were encountering “a little more hardening” than they had expected. But Mary’s determination was greater than her councilors’ resistance. As Noailles remarked, she would force “not only men, but also the elements themselves, to consent to her will.” When the Council made its negative response—written in Latin, so that Philip could read it—Mary angrily ordered the councilors to meet again and make a different answer “which would satisfy her and her husband.” With each successive week they inched closer to a final compromise, offering more and more money and men but stopping short of agreeing to go to war with Philip.

In the end Mary used tactics her father would have approved. She talked loudly of dismissing all but a few of the Council members and
then, when she had them off balance, brought each of them before her in private and threatened “some with death, some with the loss of their goods and estates, if they did not consent to the will of her husband.”
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Finally, following more deliberations and a new danger from the north where with French support Thomas Stafford and forty followers tried to raise a revolt against “the most devilish device of Mary, unrightful and unworthy queen of England,” the Council gave in. On June 7 the declaration of war was published.

The following four weeks were the last period of happiness Mary was to know. Philip was pleased with her, and in high spirits about the coming battles. The duchess of Lorraine had left, and Mary had her husband’s undivided attention—undivided, that is, save for the military preparations that absorbed both sovereigns for hours each day. Philip was occupied in planning how he would deploy his ten thousand footsoldiers and ten thousand cavalry, where he would put his sixty heavy cannon and his field artillery. Mary wrote out orders for the securing of the Scots border, oversaw the fitting out of the fleet, and, to raise additional money for Philip, released thousands of acres of crown property to be sold for cash. She expected to raise 800,000 crowns by this means, some of which would go to paying the English soldiers’ baggage costs.
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The time went by quickly, with the days divided between state business and hunting or hawking, and the long early summer nights in more work before vespers and compline. Both Mary and Philip, it was said, were as scrupulous as any religious in the observance of the canonical hours; now for a few weeks at least, they celebrated the services together.

Philip’s delay in England had nothing whatever to do with Mary, of course. He was waiting for Ruy Gomez to return with men and money from Spain. On June 20 news came that the Spanish fleet had been sighted in the Channel. Ten days later Philip was ready to make his crossing. Mary went with him on his four-day journey from London to the coast, sleeping beside him in the rooms readied for them at Sittingbourne, Canterbury and Dover. Finally at three o’clock in the afternoon of July 6 they said their goodbyes, and Philip went on board the ship that was to carry him to Calais. Mary would never see him again.

A few days before war was declared in England a solitary figure came ashore at Boulogne, and rode swiftly eastward toward the French royal court. The rider was William Flower, Norroy King of Arms, and he carried a commission from Queen Mary to announce to Henri II that England and France were at war. The herald wore on his breast the escutcheon of England, but the folds of his long black cloak hid it from sight and it was as an anonymous traveler that he rode through the fields and villages between Boulogne and Rheims. The king was at Rheims,
lodged in the abbey of St. Rémy, and when he heard that the herald had come he assembled his son the dauphin, the cardinals, dukes and other nobles and seated himself in their midst. The captain of the guard and two French heralds escorted the English king of arms into the hall, and he knelt before Henri, his coat of arms on his arm, to deliver his message.

The French king asked him in a loud voice by whom he had been sent and why. By the queen his mistress, Flower answered, and presented his commission. When it had been read aloud, Henri spoke again.

“Herald, I see that you have come to declare war on me on behalf of the queen of England. I accept the declaration, but I wish everyone to know that I have always observed toward her the good faith and amity which obtained between us.” “Now that she picks so unjust a quarrel with me,” he went on, “I hope that God will be pleased to grant me this grace, that she shall gain no more by it than her predecessors did when they attacked mine, or when they recently attacked me.”

Henri wanted there to be no mistake about the real instigator of war between England and France. “I trust that God will show his might and justice toward him who is the cause of all the evil that lies at the root of this war,” he added, making it clear that his magnanimous reception of the English herald was an acknowledgment of Mary’s subordinate role in the Hapsburg quarrel.

“I act thus because the queen is a woman,” he said irritably, “for if she were not I would employ other terms. But you will depart and leave my kingdom as quickly as you can.”

The herald rode back the way he had come, wearing around his neck a gold chain worth two hundred crowns—a present from the French king. He was instructed to “bear witness,” once he was back in England, “to the king’s virtue and generosity,” but in fact he took back intelligence about the military preparations of the enemy. The French, he told Mary and Philip once he returned, were lethargic and unfit for battle. From what he could see as he rode through the fields he judged the harvest to be scanty, especially near the border of the English pale where the troops would be massing. Overall the advantage lay with the king and queen’s forces, the herald said, and his good news spurred the English captains to fresh activity. Philip, his strategy taking shape just as he had planned, set off for Flanders with “great hope of victory.”

My paynes who can expres,

Alas they are so stronge;

My dolor will not suffer strength

My lyfe for to prolonge.

Philip did not go into battle right away. After landing at Calais he made his way to Brussels, where he informed himself of the status of his forces in Italy and on the Flemish border. At Gualtiero some imperial soldiers who were “wasting their time in ravishing some women” were cut to pieces by the outraged townspeople of Borscello, but to the south of Rome Alva had won a victory over the papal forces at La Paliario, and the Italian campaign of the duke de Guise ended in futility. In the north Philip’s commander the duke of Savoy was besieging St. Quentin. Toward the end of July Philip left Brussels for the border regions, along with Pembroke and his English fighting men. By the time the king and his English allies reached St. Quentin, however, most of the fighting was over. Savoy had taken the castle on August 10, overcoming a sizable relief force under the command of Montmorency, Constable of France. Thousands of footsoldiers and dozens of the most distinguished nobles of France, including the Constable himself, were taken prisoner. In two weeks the town itself was taken. Philip had won a major victory.

Mary pronounced the taking of St. Quentin “miraculous,” and was said to be especially pleased that the siege was accomplished with so little loss of life. (She was not told that, once the official military surrender had been negotiated, the Swiss mercenaries in the imperial army burned the town to the ground and many of the residents with it.) This initial success was followed up by the seizure of Ham and Catelet, and in Italy, Alva and the pope came to terms at the end of September. As far as
Philip was concerned, the war was over, at least for the time being, and he ordered most of his troops to disband.

But Henri II was not satisfied. He was still at war with Mary, and he saw in the aftermath of the Hapsburg successes the ideal moment to launch a surprise assault on Calais. Recovery of Calais had always been the secret longing of the French king. With its outlying fortresses of Guines and Ham it was the last remnant of the Plantagenet empire on the continent. Throughout the centuries that Calais had been in English hands it had always been seen as impregnable. The high, turreted outer walls were double, and each wall was many feet thick. The siege engines of medieval warfare could not have breached them, even if an opposing army could have gotten into position for an assault. But this was virtually impossible, as the bulk of the town and surrounding walls arced out into the sea and the low-lying marshes at its back could be flooded by locks which formed part of the defense network. A land assault was clearly impractical, but the French believed the fortress might be taken by warships whose cannon could bombard it from the sea. The entrance into the harbor proper was guarded by the small fort of Risbank, situated on a slip of land at its outer edge. If the French could seize Risbank, their ships could sail practically up to the walls of Calais and, if the reports of their engineers proved true, breach them with their artillery.

Calais’ vulnerability had been a matter of concern to Mary and her Council for some months. In May an extensive building program had been designed for the fortress, calling for new walls, including traverse walls “to stay the water,” three additional bulwarks and a new gate. Two new sluices were to be dug, and ditches sunk around the perimeter of the walls.
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Later in the summer, after Philip left, Mary requested the Deputy and Treasurer of Calais to send her a statement of the number of paid soldiers in the garrison, and corresponded with the commander, the earl of Pembroke, about the state of the defenses. Both Pembroke and his second in command, Wentworth, urged Mary to send five hundred more men to the region; it was never done, and the plans to strengthen the fortifications seem to have been laid aside, probably for lack of money to implement them.

Thus in December of 1557, as the French prepared to attack, Calais and its surrounding fortresses were ill equipped and undermanned. Calais itself had only half the number of men needed to defend its venerable ramparts, and Risbank was not only inadequately guarded but its food supplies were gone and its shore side so weak that an enemy could reportedly “come in a night to it.” The winter weather too was on the side of the attackers, for the marshes of the Pale froze over and made the way easier for the approaching army of the duke de Guise as it took the first of the outworks upriver from Calais on New Years’ Day.

The following day Guise’s men began a bombardment of Risbank. The fortress was abandoned almost at once, the captain “jumping out of it through a breach the French had made” and putting himself at the mercy of the enemy.
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At this point Wentworth—who was in command now that Pembroke was assisting Philip—should have summoned help from the nearest source, Philip’s diminished army. But for a variety of reasons he did nothing more than request a few hundred men from Philip, trusting in some “artificial fire, which an engineer had asserted he would be able to use to great effect,” to make up for the depleted ranks of his soldiers. He relied too on the country people who streamed into the town to escape the French. The men were little help, “absenting themselves in houses and secret places,” but the women labored diligently, reinforcing the walls and digging defense works. In all likelihood Wentworth mistrusted Philip almost as much as he did the French, for in his letters to Mary he asked for massive aid and left no doubt of the desperate situation of the town.

Mary responded as quickly as she could, sending dozens of letters to the landowners of the southeastern counties ordering them to put their servants and tenants in arms and dispatch them to Dover. The admiral was instructed to ready his fastest ships to be sent to Calais, and the Warden of the Cinque Ports was commanded to provide mariners. If need be, Mary wrote to him, he could open any letters intended for the royal court that arrived from the besieged town or the war zone—“except the king’s letters”—and adjust his preparations accordingly.
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The Council too bestirred itself and considered the tactics of relieving Calais, finally hitting on a plan for communicating with the besieged garrison by means of letters shot over the walls with crossbows, sent in duplicate in case some were to “light on the tops of houses or other places where they may not be come by.”

As these hurried efforts were being made in England Guise’s ships were launching their first attack on Calais itself. The bombardment was under way before the captains realized that they had mistimed their assault. At high tide the ships in the harbor were dead even with the outer walls, but the attack began at low tide, when the cannon shot hit harmlessly five or six feet below them. At the same time Wentworth and his men were able to shoot down onto the decks of the French ships, and after a short time the attack was broken off. It was renewed two days later, however, and this time the tide was judged accurately. Within hours the French cannon opened a wide breach in the walls. The last line of defense for the English, the “artificial fire,” failed to ignite—the engineer claimed that the French soldiers wet the powder with their dripping clothes as they entered the town. The fall of Calais was soon followed by the French capture of Guines and Ham, both of which were razed, and
with their surrender the last foothold of the English on the continent was lost.

“We have felt great pain and anxiety on account of the fall of Calais,” Philip wrote to the English Council ten days after news of the surrender reached the court, “greater indeed than we can express in words.” Philip was heartened, though, to hear from Pole that Mary responded to the crisis by redoubling her efforts to send men and supplies across the Channel for an English counterattack. She put much of the blame for the loss on the unfortunate Wentworth, whose loyalty was much in doubt—he was officially charged with selling Calais to the French—and whose stupidity in failing to open the locks and flood the marshy hinterland at a crucial point in the siege had allowed the attackers clear access to the town. She accused Wentworth of “cowardice and want of spirit,” to give way so easily when he stood within the walls of such an impregnable fortress; she reproached him with “standing in fear of his own shadow.”
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She was encouraged by Lord Grey’s stalwart defense of Guines, however, and when he wrote her from the cell where the French kept him prisoner, in the top of a high tower in Suzain Castle, locked in with four locks and guarded by four archers day and night, she wrote back at some length. Grey had served her as well as Wentworth had served her ill, she said, and “exhorted him to be of good cheer.” Mary’s encouraging words had the effect of making Grey’s plight worse, for as soon as his captors heard her herald read out her message, they promptly raised his ransom by ten thousand crowns.
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On the same day that Philip wrote to the Council expressing his grief over the loss of Calais he wrote to Pole to declare his joy over the news of the queen’s pregnancy. Sometime in the fall of 1557 Mary had begun to believe, despite the odds against it, that she was expecting Philip’s child. Because of the ridicule the announcement was certain to produce—and also because she wanted to be very certain in her own mind—Mary waited until December to inform her husband. Then, having “very sure signs” that this time there was no mistake, she let it be known that she expected to be delivered in March. The news, Philip told Pole, “went far to lighten the sorrow he had felt for the loss of Calais,” and was “the one thing in the world he had most desired.”
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For Mary the impending birth seems to have had overtones of finality. In March she made her will. “Foreseeing the great danger which by God’s ordinance remain to all women in their travail of children,” she wrote, she thought it good, “both for discharge of my conscience and continuance of good order within my realms and dominions,” to declare her last will and testament. Mary’s bequests reflected the people and things she valued most in life. First among these was the unborn child, the “heir, issue and fruit of her body” to whom she left her crown and all
other “honors, castles, fortresses, manors, lands, tenements, prerogatives and hereditaments.” Next was her lord, her “most dear and entirely beloved husband,” to whom she bequeathed her “chiefest jewel,” the love of her subjects, “to require the nobility of his heart” toward her. She also left Philip two enormous table diamonds, one her gift from Charles V and the other her wedding present from Philip himself, and with them the gold collar set with nine diamonds which Philip had given her on the Epiphany after their marriage and a very recent present from him, a ruby set in a gold ring. Monks and nuns were prominent on her list of bequests—the Carthusians of Sheen, the Observants of Greenwich and Southampton, the Benedictines of St. Bartholomew, the Brigittines of Sion and the “poor nuns of Langley.” To Cardinal Pole she left a thousand pounds to serve as one of her executors, and charged him with continuing his work of rehabilitating the English church and taking care of the additional crown lands she ordered her executors to restore to the churchmen from whom her father and brother had taken them.

Katherine of Aragon was much honored in Mary’s will. Besides the many masses to be said for her soul by the religious Mary supported, the royal executors were directed to exhume Katherine’s body from its undistinguished resting place at Peterborough and bury it next to her daughter’s. And, Mary added, she wanted “honorable tombs or monuments” made for them both, “for decent memory of us.” About her father Mary was eloquent by her silence. The Protestants claimed later that Mary and Pole had secretly ordered Henry VIII’s remains dug up and burned—a story too well documented to dismiss out of hand—but whether they did or not the late king was mentioned only briefly and impersonally in Mary’s testament. Presumably he was to be included among the “other progenitors” besides Katherine whose souls were to be commemorated in prayer, but his name appeared only in connection with the debts remaining unpaid from his reign: Mary ordered them discharged.

To her household, as always, Mary was very generous. Immediately after her death two thousand pounds was to be distributed among her “poor servants that be ordinary,” with special regard to those who had most need and had served her longest. Some thirty-four hundred pounds in personal benefactions were itemized, and the principal household officials were given two hundred pounds each. The queen meant to be generous, too, to many others of her subjects whom she would never see: the poor prisoners and the poor of London among whom a thousand pounds was to be distributed; the poor scholars of “Oxinford and Cambridge” who were to receive five hundred pounds; the sick in the hospital of the Savoy and all the royal creditors. If after her death there were to be found anyone she had “injured or done wrong”—“as to my remembrance willingly I have not,” she added—they were to be paid or com
pensated for the injury. And finally, Mary ordered a new charitable institution to be established in her name, a hospital for soldiers. “Forasmuch as presently there is no house or hospital specially ordained and provided for the relief and help of poor and old soldiers,” she wrote, “and namely of such as have been or shall be hurt or maimed in the wars and service of this realm, the which we think both honor, conscience and charity willeth should be provided for.” Mary was thinking not only of the wounded from the Calais garrison and the few who escaped the butchery of Guines, but of the aging men who had fought for her against Wyatt, and of those now mustering at Dover to join her husband in the spring campaign.