Mary Tudor (41 page)

MARY’S REBUTTAL OF
the Commons’ challenge enhanced her authority. Never before had a Tudor ruler flaunted popular opinion, as expressed by Parliament, so openly. In the face of the Commons’ delegation, Mary had claimed the right to marry whomever she wished. By maintaining that she would marry as God directed her, “to his honour and to our country’s good,” she argued that her private inclination and the public welfare were compatible. But many within and outside the court remained discontented. As one contemporary observed, “This marriage was not well thought of by the Commons, nor much better liked by many of the nobility.”
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At end of the year, Mary wrote to Henry II, assuring him that her marriage to Philip would not alter her desire for amicable relations with France. Henry was not convinced. He told Sir Nicholas Wotton “that he clearly saw that she was allying herself with the greatest enemy he had in the world, and he knew marital authority to be very strong with ladies. He had not thought she would choose a match so odious to him.”
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As Renard reported, the French ambassador “is plotting openly against the alliance, and has spoken to several councillors and nobles to whom he has rehearsed all imaginable disadvantages,” spreading fears that England would be forced into war against France and that the country would become ever more subject to Spanish rule.
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When the imperial delegation arrived in the City of London to sign the marriage treaty on January 2, 1554, it was received coldly. The people, “nothing rejoicing, held down their heads sorrowfully.” As the retinue rode through the capital, “boys pelted them with snowballs; so hateful was the sight of their coming in to them.”
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Henry, meanwhile, instructed his ambassador:

On December 1, Mary wrote to the emperor:

As a token of the new accord, Charles had sent Mary “a large and valuable diamond”—“in witness of the fact,” he told his ambassadors, “that beyond our old friendship and in respect for her position, we now consider her as our own daughter in virtue of this alliance.” Their union saw the climax of Mary’s long-standing relationship with the emperor and the revival of the Anglo-Spanish entente established by Mary’s mother on her marriage to Prince Arthur, fifty-three years earlier.

On January 14, the terms of the treaty were officially proclaimed at Westminster “to the lords, nobility, and gentlemen” by the lord chancellor. As Gardiner explained, Mary had made her decision to wed Philip “partly for the wealth and enriching of the realm, and partly for
friendship and other weighty considerations.”
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They should, he continued, “thank God that so noble, worthy, and famous a prince” would “humble himself as in this marriage to take upon him rather as a subject than otherwise; and that the Queen should rule all things as she doth now; and that there should be of the counsel no Spaniard.”
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It did little to allay fears. After Gardiner’s declaration of the terms of the marriage treaty, one chronicler described how the news was “very much misliked … almost each man was abashed, looking daily for worse matters to grow shortly after.”
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I
N LATE NOVEMBER 1553, A GROUP OF CONSPIRATORS, LED BY SIR
Thomas Wyatt, a Kentish gentleman and the son of the poet of the same name; Sir James Croft, the head of a Marches family; and Sir Peter Carew, a soldier and Devonshire landowner, met to discuss the overthrow of the Marian government. Their plan would see a four-pronged rising in Kent, the Midlands, the Southwest, and the Welsh Marches, followed by a march on London. Mary would be deposed and the Spanish marriage thwarted; Elizabeth and Edward Courtenay would be married and both placed on the throne.

The rising was timed for Palm Sunday, March 18, to coincide with the start of Philip’s journey to England. It was a scheme backed by the French in what was a final attempt to thwart the Spanish marriage. As Henry II wrote dismissively, the conspirators “have to do only with a woman who is badly provided with good counsel and men of ability, so it should be easy for them to guard against discovery if they are prudent enough and have blood in their nails.”
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By the new year reports had spread of a “traitorous conspiracy” fostered by “certain lewd and ill-disposed persons.”
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Sir Peter Carew’s return to Devon during the Christmas festivities raised suspicions, which seemed to be confirmed when he failed to obey a summons to
attend the Privy Council.
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On January 18, Renard informed Mary that a French fleet was assembling off the Normandy coast and pressed her to take immediate steps to protect herself.
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Mary ordered that troops be raised and an oath of loyalty be administered to each member of the royal household “in order to ascertain the real feelings of each one.” As the oath requesting “obedience and fidelity to his Highness” was read out, “all raised their hand.” The same was done with the mayor, magistrates, aldermen, and men of law of the city, who “did not openly show any opposition.”
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Circulars were sent out across the country with copies of the treaty’s provisions and orders to proclaim them, “lest rebels be inspired under the pretence of misliking this marriage, to rebel against the Catholic religion and divine service within this our realm, and to take from us that liberty which is not denied to the meanest woman in the choice of husband.”
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On the twenty-first, Courtenay confessed his role in the affair to Gardiner. As Renard reported in a letter to the emperor, Courtenay had been approached by certain individuals who had sought to influence him “where religion and the marriage were concerned.” However, “he had never paid any attention to them.” Three days later, the details were revealed and the plot began to unravel.
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The rebels were forced into action two months earlier than expected. Three of the anticipated risings failed. Carew fled to France, and the duke of Suffolk, who was to have led the rising in Leicestershire just weeks after he was pardoned for his support of Northumberland’s coup, was arrested and taken to the Tower. Sir Thomas Wyatt, meanwhile, succeeded in raising a substantial force in Kent.

ON THURSDAY, JANUARY
25, Wyatt raised his standard at Maidstone with 3,000 men and issued a proclamation declaring the realm to be in imminent danger. He appealed to the townsmen to “join with us,” maintaining that he meant the queen no harm “but better counsel and councillors” to preserve liberty against the Spaniards.
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He declared he had taken up arms solely for the love of his country, fearing that the Spanish match would reduce the realm to slavery, and called upon “every good Englishman” to help him. The Spaniards had “already arrived at Dover,” he said, and were “passing upward in
London, in companies of ten, four and six, with harness and arqubusers, and marions, with matchlight.”
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By Thursday the twenty-fifth, Wyatt had taken Rochester for the rebels.

The queen was at Whitehall when she heard of Wyatt’s proclamation, and a band of citizens was quickly drawn together under the command of the eighty-year-old Thomas, duke of Norfolk.
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On Sunday, the twenty-eighth, Norfolk set out for Rochester with a detachment of the Guard and five hundred city whitecoats, accompanied by one of the queen’s heralds.

Upon reaching Wyatt’s forces, the herald pronounced that all rebels who would desist from their purpose would be pardoned. With great shouts the rebels declared “they had done nothing whereof they should need any pardon.” A commander with the city whitecoats, Captain Alexander Brett, addressed his men, telling them, “Masters, we go about to fight against our native countrymen of England and our friends in a quarrel unrightful and partly wicked”; the rebels were assembled to prevent Englishmen from becoming “slaves and villeins,” to protect against Spanish designs “to spoil us of our goods and lands, ravish our wives before our faces, and deflower our daughters in our presence.” Many of the whitecoats deserted, proclaiming “We are all Englishmen!” and expressing fear at the prospect of rule by the Spaniards.
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Norfolk and the remnant of his forces retreated to London. One chronicler wrote, “You should have seen some of the guard come home, their coats torn, all ruined, without arrows or string in their bow, or sword, in very strange ways.”
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The desertion of the city whitecoats threw into question the loyalty of the whole of the capital. Wyatt’s forces were rumored to be near, moving along the banks of the Thames toward Blackheath and Greenwich. Guns were set at each of the city gates, and a watch was kept day and night. The queen sent privy councillors Sir Edward Hastings and Sir Thomas Cornwallis to establish the cause of the commotion. If it was a question of the Spanish marriage, they were to point out that it was the duty of true subjects to sue by petition and not by force. If the rebels would lay down their arms, Hastings and Cornwallis were to offer to negotiate.
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They encountered Wyatt at Dartford, but he dismissed their conciliatory
overtures, declaring that he would not lay down arms before he had secured control of queen and capital, and proceeded to march on London. “I am no traitor,” he declared, “and the cause whereof I have gathered the people is to defend the realm from our overrunning by Strangers; which follows, this Marriage taking place.”
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The Privy Council was divided as to how to protect the queen’s person. Mary had been urged to withdraw to Windsor or the Tower but chose to remain at Westminster with a guard of 500 men, well armed and with all the necessary provision for defense. “She even asked to go and fight herself; that however was not permitted to her.”
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Instead she put her faith in Londoners to defend her. On the thirty-first a further proclamation was issued, condemning Wyatt and his company as “rank traitors.”
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The livery companies were informed that 2,000 men were needed for the defense of the city, and every householder was instructed to “raise for his family … on pain of death” and arm immediately for the defense of London “and not elsewhere at their peril.”
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