Mary Tudor (66 page)
Authors: Linda Porter
Mary’s confidence that the word of God, in the mouth of good Catholic priests, would overcome the misleading interpretations of Protestant reformers was great. She was also well aware of the damage that could be done by the printing press among the literate sections of English society. Her ideas do not sound like those of a zealot with a programme for mass extermination of religious opponents.Yet they take for granted the assumption that heretics will burn, as had always been their fate throughout the centuries. It is unlikely that the queen’s thoughts struck any particular note of alarm, or repugnance, in her councillors when they read them.
Almost a year later, when the parliament of 1555 met in the autumn, the first burnings had already taken place in London. John Rogers in February 1555 was the first of the Protestant martyrs whose deaths were dwelt on with almost loving horror by John Foxe decades later. When Rogers died, Sir Robert Rochester, a council member, was present as Mary had decreed. Foxe described Rogers’ end in detail: ‘When it [the fire] had taken hold upon his legs and shoulders, he, as one feeling no smart, washed his hands in the flames, as though it had been cold water. After lifting up his hands unto heaven, not removing the same until such time as the devouring fire had consumed them, most mildly this happy martyr yielded up his spirit’.
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There were several other high-profile victims in the ensuing months, and Bishops Latimer and Ridley went to the stake at Oxford on 16 October, just five days before Parliament met. But it was not their agonising deaths which made the 1555 parliament the most querulous of Mary’s reign. The parliament had a higher number of representatives from the wealthy and titled classes than its predecessors, and they were still nervous about the security of their property. The queen’s determination to pay back monies from her ecclesiastical lands to Rome caused a great deal of concern.Where would things stop? Was it just a matter of time before Cardinal Pole came asking for their revenues, too? And why should they vote a subsidy to a woman who seemed bent on giving away her money to the pope? Things got so bad that William Cecil was cajoled out of his self-imposed retirement to ensure the passage of a bill for the payment of first fruits and tenths, taxation on clerical lands that had come to the English Crown since 1534, back to Rome. The bill eventually passed, but only after the House of Commons had been locked in their chamber all day on 3 December 1555. There was also opposition to a bill intended to allow the Crown to confiscate the property of Englishmen who had gone abroad, though it has been pointed out that by no means all these people were religious exiles. The queen realised, when she dissolved Parliament, that Philip would never achieve his aim of being crowned.The constitutional implications, that he might continue to rule after her death, were too serious. By now, she had lost Bishop Gardiner, as well. He had managed to make his last address as chancellor when Parliament opened, but he was very ill, and he died on 12 November. Philip proposed Paget for Gardiner’s role, but Mary would not agree. She had accepted the idea of a ‘select council’, or inner council composed of a smaller number of advisers who had Philip’s confidence, but making Paget Lord Chancellor was a step too far. Her thoughts turned back to her religious opponents, and the one man, above all, who epitomised everything she hated about the changes wrought during the reign of Henry VIII. That man was Thomas Cranmer, and he was to be the most famous of her victims.
It might seem, given the gap of more than two and a half years between Mary’s accession and Cranmer’s death, that she was unsure of what to do with him. But she always had him in her sights.The archbishop, over 60 and an elderly man by 16th—century standards, certainly hoped for mercy. Seeing the way in which Mary treated her political opponents there was, on the face of it, some grounds for optimism.The reality was different. It was not his secular opposition, the fact that he had signed Edward VI’s Letters Patent disinheriting her, nor that he had held out almost to the end on 19 July 1553 against Mary’s proclamation as queen, which was his downfall. He had sinned against the religious belief and order she held dear all her life, encouraged her father to break with Rome and pronounced her mother’s divorce on his own authority. Much of the misery she endured as a young woman she could lay at his door. She was determined to break him, in body and spirit. It would not be a swift act of vengeance. There was no hurry and at times affairs of state got in the way, prolonging his ordeal.
Although allowed to officiate at the funeral of Edward VI, Cranmer knew it was only a matter of time before he lost his liberty. Mary steadfastly refused to see him, as if the mere fact of being in his presence would pollute her.
Infuriated by the reintroduction of the mass, Cranmer issued a public declaration of his opposition at the beginning of September, which was printed and widely distributed in London. Such recalcitrance could not be permitted. On 14 September 1553, he was summoned to appear before the privy council in the Star Chamber and then, ‘after long and ferocious debating of his offence by the whole board, it was thought convenient that, as well for the treason committed by him against the queen’s highness, as for the aggravating of the same his offence, by spreading abroad seditious bills, moving tumults to the disquietness of the present state, he should be committed to the Tower, there to remain and to be referred to justice, or further ordered as shall stand with the queen’s pleasure’.
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Mary’s pleasure, though she did not make it apparent at the time, was that he should die the death of a heretic.
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Mary’s pleasure, though she did not make it apparent at the time, was that he should die the death of a heretic.
But first he had to be dealt with by the secular arm. On 13 November he, three of Northumberland’s sons and Lady Jane Grey were tried for treason at the Guildhall. Initially, he pleaded not guilty, but then changed his mind. The inevitable verdict meant that he was deprived of his see under English common law and the ensuing act of attainder against him by Parliament deprived him of his property. In the eyes of the law, he was now a dead man, and Simon Renard expected his imminent execution.
Yet it did not come. Mary wanted him tried for heresy, and this raised legal problems, since he was already convicted for secular offences. She took very ill a letter he wrote her asking for mercy. In it, he made clear that he would accept the political reality of her role as sovereign lady but that he would not budge on matters of religion.The archbishop began in obsequious terms, asking her mercy:
Most lamentably mourning and moaning himself unto your highness, Thomas Cranmer, though unworthy either to speak or write unto your highness, yet having no person that I know to be mediator for me and knowing your pitiful ears being ready to hear all pitiful complaints, and seeing so many before to have felt your abundant clemency in like cause, am now constrained … to ask mercy and pardon for my heinous folly and offence, in consenting and following the testament and last will of our late sovereign lord King Edward VI …
He went on to claim that he had never liked the will ‘nor never anything grieved me so much that your grace’s brother did’. But he was adamant that he never conspired with Northumberland to deprive Mary of the throne. After all, the duke hated him: ‘… his heart was not such towards me (seeking long time my destruction) that he would either trust me in such matter, or think that I would be persuaded by him’.
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Whether truthful or not, his version of the events of the summer of 1553 hardly mattered.
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Whether truthful or not, his version of the events of the summer of 1553 hardly mattered.
Yet it was not easy to proceed against him with the absolute propriety on which the queen insisted. The return of the English Church to Rome must come before action against Cranmer, who had, after all, been appointed archbishop of Canterbury by the pope. A priority for both Mary and her government was to get Cranmer to recant publicly. This would be a tremendous propaganda coup and would go a long way to silencing the Protestant opposition in London and abroad.
Through much of 1554 Cranmer was under house arrest in Oxford, whose university was thought to be sounder theologically than Cambridge. He engaged in long and fruitless disputations with Catholic divines, but it was not until September 1555 that his trial for heresy began, at the university church. By that time, the ashes of Mary’s first Protestant martyr at Smithfield were seven months cold. The outcome of Cranmer’s heresy trial, like that of his secular one, was never in doubt, and when the charges against him were proved, he had 80 days to obey a summons to present himself in Rome, for final judgement.
Did he seriously think that the queen would sanction such a journey? Perhaps, since he wrote to her appealing for writing and research materials to help him present his case there. But he continued to underestimate the extent of Mary’s hatred of him and to increase her anger by identifying the pope with the Antichrist and making an unremitting attack on transubstantiation, the Catholic belief in the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the bread and wine of the mass. The Catholic mass was, to him, grounded in fundamental disobedience to the intention of Christ himself: ‘… the pope keepeth from all lay-persons the sacrament of their redemption by Christ’s blood, which Christ commanded to be given unto them’.
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And he further reproached Mary for failing in her duty as queen of England by suborning the country to papal jurisdiction. Her coronation oath required her to maintain the laws, liberties and customs of England; Mary’s oath of obedience to the pope was in direct conflict.
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And he further reproached Mary for failing in her duty as queen of England by suborning the country to papal jurisdiction. Her coronation oath required her to maintain the laws, liberties and customs of England; Mary’s oath of obedience to the pope was in direct conflict.
With him at Oxford were Bishops Latimer and Ridley, whose moral support helped keep up Cranmer’s spirits. By October 1555 Mary and Pole began to fear that the trio represented a considerable threat to law and order, as they were inspiring Protestant dissent. After a failed attempt by the Spanish Dominican friar de Soto to change their minds, the decision was taken to send Latimer and Ridley to the stake. Such high-profile deaths, it was believed, would act as a stern deterrent. It was also hoped that they would weaken Cranmer’s resolve. The old man was taken to the tower of the gatehouse where he lodged, to witness their deaths in the flames. He was appalled by what he saw, as was intended. Cranmer, like Mary, had never seen anyone die this terrible death, and the horror of it engulfed his spirit. He was too far away to hear the famous last words attributed to Latimer by John Foxe: ‘Be of good courage, Master Ridley, and play the man: we shall this day light such a candle by God’s grace in England as [I trust] shall never be put out.’ Latimer died quickly but Ridley suffered appallingly ‘from the ill-making of the fire, the faggots being green and piled too high, so that the flames, which burned fiercely beneath, could not well get to him, was put to such exquisite pain that he desired them for God’s sake to let the fire come unto him’.
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Latimer’s words must have haunted his companion’s prolonged agony. But Cranmer, faint with horror, could not - yet - play the man himself.
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Latimer’s words must have haunted his companion’s prolonged agony. But Cranmer, faint with horror, could not - yet - play the man himself.
Mary now handed over to Pole the task of dealing with Cranmer, but, like the queen, the cardinal was not willing to meet his foe face to face. Instead, he pleaded with Cranmer in writing to save himself:‘I say if you be not plucked out by the ear, you be utterly undone in body and soul.’
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For a while, it seemed that he might prevail. Isolated and despairing, terrified of being burned alive, ceaselessly pressured by attempts to convert him, Cranmer suffered a complete collapse on 28 January 1556. Two of his sisters, one Catholic, the other Protestant, had been fighting a war for his soul, and he could not bear the strain any more. He signed a recantation, hoping to the last for clemency from Mary. As with the duke of Northumberland, the man Mary hated as much as Cranmer, none came. When the news was brought to him on 17 March, he collapsed again. Ghastly dreams, in which he saw himself rejected by both God and man, left alone to face the abyss of hell, tormented him. He wrote (or had written for him) an abject acknowledgement of his crimes: the divorce, the betrayal of the spiritual welfare of Henry VIII, the injury done to Katherine of Aragon, the introduction of heresies, denial of the real presence and abolition of the requiem mass - all were imputed to his evil influence.The original author of this list could have been Mary herself, so close to her own experience does it read.
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For a while, it seemed that he might prevail. Isolated and despairing, terrified of being burned alive, ceaselessly pressured by attempts to convert him, Cranmer suffered a complete collapse on 28 January 1556. Two of his sisters, one Catholic, the other Protestant, had been fighting a war for his soul, and he could not bear the strain any more. He signed a recantation, hoping to the last for clemency from Mary. As with the duke of Northumberland, the man Mary hated as much as Cranmer, none came. When the news was brought to him on 17 March, he collapsed again. Ghastly dreams, in which he saw himself rejected by both God and man, left alone to face the abyss of hell, tormented him. He wrote (or had written for him) an abject acknowledgement of his crimes: the divorce, the betrayal of the spiritual welfare of Henry VIII, the injury done to Katherine of Aragon, the introduction of heresies, denial of the real presence and abolition of the requiem mass - all were imputed to his evil influence.The original author of this list could have been Mary herself, so close to her own experience does it read.
On the drizzly morning of 21 March, a much calmer man prepared for death. Those around him were convinced he would die a good Catholic. But he had one last scene to play. As he stood to speak in the university church, expected to uphold what he had written, he began to diverge from the script. At first, some of those present did not even notice. But it was, he said, ‘contrary to the truth I had in my heart, and written for fear of death’. But now, that fear had gone and he disavowed ‘all such bills and papers which I have written or signed with my hand since my degradation’.
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It was a devastating volte-face, depriving the government of the moral and public relations victory they had fully expected. Commotion raged in the church, and Cranmer kept on shouting, refusing the pope ‘with all his false doctrine’. He was about to reiterate his views on the sacrament when he was bodily pulled from the pulpit and bundled through the damp streets to the stake, in the ditch for rubbish which surrounded the town of Oxford.
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It was a devastating volte-face, depriving the government of the moral and public relations victory they had fully expected. Commotion raged in the church, and Cranmer kept on shouting, refusing the pope ‘with all his false doctrine’. He was about to reiterate his views on the sacrament when he was bodily pulled from the pulpit and bundled through the damp streets to the stake, in the ditch for rubbish which surrounded the town of Oxford.
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