Mary Tudor (39 page)
Authors: Anna Whitelock
Mary was forced to curb her zeal; for now she would remain supreme head of the Church. As she wrote to Pole on November 15:
This Parliament was to make a full restoration [of obedience], but we now need another in three or four months. You will hear that all Edward’s statutes about religion have been annulled, and the state of religion put back where it was at the time of the death of King Henry, our father of the most pious memory.
Yet Pole still pushed for an immediate and full restitution: “He [God] destroyed the government that displeased Him without any human action, and gave power to a virgin, who trusted in Him,” he railed, yet Mary “thinks that temporal matters should be taken care of first. She must not be so ungrateful … nothing more neglectful than putting off religion to the end. Her impudent councillors must not intimidate her.” And he implored Mary, “[God] did not give you such
great courage so that you might become fearful as Queen.”
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In a subsequent letter he told her, “You have given your enemies good argument that you [are] schismatic, since [you] have taken Parliament’s authority for most important confirmation of your claim.” It was “no excuse” that some of Parliament had proved resistant. Her adversaries could say that she was “no better than Northumberland” with regard to obedience. “You look weak now,” he ended; “these acts establish schism.”
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Despite Pole’s insistence, Mary knew she could not move too fast. Yet she dared not show “the intent of her heart in this matter,” given the opposition expressed.
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On the day that Parliament rose, a dead dog with a shaved crown, representing a tonsured priest, a rope about its neck, was slung through the windows of the Queen’s Presence Chamber.
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Mary was indignant and warned Parliament that “such acts might move her to a kind of justice further removed from justice than she would wish.”
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AS OF DECEMBER
20, religious services were to be conducted and sacraments administered as they had been in the last years of Henry VIII’s reign. It marked the beginning of restoration and reform. Although Mary did not use the title, she did use her authority as supreme head to press for reform. In royal articles of March 1554, she ordered the strict observance of the traditional ceremonies and the repression of “corrupt and naughty opinions, unlawful books, ballads, and other pernicious and hurtful devices.” Married priests were to be deprived, all processions were to be conducted in Latin, all “laudable” ceremonies were to be observed, and “uniform” doctrine was to be set forth in homilies.
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The restoration of the Mass and of Catholic ceremonies demanded the return of all that the Edwardian government had had stripped out of the churches. In articles designed for the visitation of his diocese in the autumn, Edmund Bonner, bishop of London, outlined a program of reconstruction to be adopted by bishops. The articles specified what his church now required, and parishioners were ordered to return property still in their possession:
Whether the things underwritten (which are to be found at the cost of the parishioners) be in the church: it is to wit, a legend, an antiphoner, a grail, a psalter, an ordinal to say or solemnize divine office, a missal, a manual, a processional, a chalice, two cruetts, a principal vestment with chasuble, a vestment for the deacon and sub-deacon, a cope with the appurtenances, it is to wit an amice, alb, girdle, stole and fannon, the high altar with apparel in the front and parts thereof, three towels, three surplices, a rochet, a cross for procession with candlesticks, a cross for the dead, an incenser, a ship or bessel for frankincense, a little sanctas bell, a pix with an honest and decent cover, and a veil for the Lent, banners for the Rogation week, bells and ropes, a bier for the dead, a vessel to carry holy water about, a candlestick for the paschal taper, a font to christen children with covering and lock and key, and generally all other things, which after the custom of the country or place, the parishioners are bound to find, maintain and keep?
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Bonner’s investigation was minute in its detail, from issues of dress to clerical residence and morality. But it also focused specifically on seeking out heresy. He wanted to know about the doctrine taught by the clergy, about seditious or heretical books in circulation, and about priests who administered any sacraments in English. In addition, Bonner wanted the names of any laity who, at the moment of consecration, “do hang down their heads, hide themselves behind pillars, turn away their faces, or depart out of the church,” any who “murmured, grudged or spoke against” the Mass, the sacraments, or ceremonies, and any who “made noise, jangled, talked or played the fool in church.”
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He demanded the names of any circulating “slanderous books, ballads or plays, contrary to the Christian religion.” He wanted to know about any who refused to take part in rituals such as procession on Sunday, and issuing of the pax, and any who had eaten flesh on the traditional fasts or vigils. Pictures on the walls of churches were to be removed that “chiefly and principally do tend to the maintenance of carnal liberty” by attacking fasting, good works, celibacy, or the veneration of the Blessed Sacrament.
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Gradually, signs indicating the return to Catholicism were visible across the country. In November 1553, Saint Katherine’s image was carried around the steeple at St. Paul’s on her patronal feast day, and on Saint Andrew’s Day there was “a general procession … in Latin with
ora pro nobis.”
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As Machyn recorded in his diary, “The viii day of December was [the] procession at [St.] Paul’s. When all was done my lord of London [Bonner] commanded that every parish church should provide for a cross and a staff and cope to go to the procession every Sunday, Wednesday and Friday, and pray unto God for fair weather through London.”
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Outside London, Robert Parkyn, a Yorkshire priest, described how
it was joy to hear and see how these carnal priests (which had led their lives in fornication with their whores and harlots) did lower and look down when they were commanded to leave and forsake their concubines and harlots and to do open penance according to the Canon Law … all old ceremonies, laudably used beforetime in the holy Church was then revived, daily frequented and used.
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The process of Catholic revival, resisted by some but welcomed by many, had begun.
A MARRYING HUMOR
So as to restore the succession and continue the line, they [the Council] considered it necessary for the good of the kingdom that the Queen should enter into an alliance, and marry; and the sooner the better, because of the state of her affairs and her years.
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—R
ENARD TO THE EMPEROR
, O
CTOBER
5, 1553
U
PON MARY’S ACCESSION THERE WAS GENERAL EXPECTATION THAT
she would marry. No one expected a woman to rule alone. It was important that she have an heir to ensure a Catholic succession and someone to assist her in government.
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Mary now accepted the need to marry: “I have lived a virgin, and I doubt not, with God’s grace, to live still. But if, as my ancestors have done it might please God that I should leave you a successor to be your governor.”
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At thirty-seven Mary would have to wed quickly if she were to stand any chance of conceiving.
Despite the contemporary belief that a queen needed a consort, there was also apprehension. It was assumed that a husband would exercise power. Under English law not only would a woman’s property, titles, and income pass to her husband upon marriage, but she would also cede governance of her person. For Mary, any prospective bridegroom had to be of royal blood and a good Catholic.
English hopes came to focus on the twenty-five-year-old Edward Courtenay, a great-grandson of Edward IV. His father, the marquess of Exeter, had been executed by Henry VIII in 1538; his mother, Gertrude Courtenay (née Blount), the marchioness of Exeter, remained one of
Mary’s most trusted intimates. Chief among his supporters was the lord chancellor, Stephen Gardiner, who had spent a number of years imprisoned with Courtenay in the Tower. Although Gardiner was supported by almost all the other privy councillors, Mary quickly made it clear that she had no intention of marrying Courtenay or any other of her own subjects. Dom Luis of Portugal, the brother of King Juan, who had been suggested as a husband many times over the previous years, now renewed his overtures. Maximilian, the son of the emperor’s brother, Ferdinand, also emerged as a possible candidate; while Charles V intrigued for a match between Mary and his own son, Philip, prince of Spain.
The prospect of Mary’s marriage was of great importance in the struggle between the Houses of Habsburg and Valois. If Charles could succeed in establishing his son, Philip, upon the throne of England as Mary’s husband, the sea route between Spain and the Netherlands would be secured, the Netherlands themselves would be saved from falling into the clutches of the king of France, as they seemed likely to do, and France would be encircled.
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Moreover, it would provide a counterweight against the intended marriage of the French dauphin to Mary, queen of Scots.
To the French an Anglo-Habsburg marriage was deeply alarming and had to be prevented. As Noailles wrote to the French king, the queen’s marriage would be “to the great displeasure of all, with perpetual war against your Majesty, the Scotch and her own subjects, who will unwillingly suffer the rule of a foreigner.” He continued, “It was a perpetual war against the King [of France] that the Emperor wished her to espouse rather than his son.”
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The final outcome of the long struggle between Habsburg and Valois seemed to depend on developments in England: at stake was the hegemony of Europe.
IT WAS ON JULY
29, at his first private audience with the queen at Beaulieu in Essex, that Simon Renard raised the question of the queen’s marriage. The emperor, he declared, was mindful of the fact that a “great part of the labour of government could with difficulty be undertaken by a woman” and urged her to “entertain the idea of marriage and fix on some suitable match as soon as possible.”
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Mary had told Renard that she had never thought of marrying before she was queen and “as a private individual she would never have desired it, but preferred to end her days in chastity.” Katherine of Aragon, in one of her last letters, had urged her daughter “not thinking or desiring any husband for Christ’s passion.”
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However, as she now occupied “a public position,” Mary was determined to follow the emperor’s advice and said she would “choose whomsoever you might recommend.” At his second audience two weeks later, Renard reopened the subject by mentioning Mary’s duty to the nation and implying that a foreigner would best help her fulfill the obligation. At this Mary laughed “not once but several times, whilst she regarded me in a way that proved the idea to be very agreeable to her.”
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