The House of Tudor (24 page)

During the time since her arrest Anne’s moods had fluctuated wildly between resignation, hope and hysteria. ‘One hour she is determined to die and the next hour much contrary to that’, reported William Kingston, Constable of the Tower. But now she was anxious to make an end. The stories of her impatience and her unseasonable high spirits are well known and William Kingston was greatly disconcerted by his prisoner’s shrieks of merriment and the rather tasteless jokes she would keep making about the smallness of her neck. It was not at all what Kingston was used to. ‘I have seen many men and also women executed’, he wrote, ‘and all they have been in great sorrow. But to my knowledge this lady had much joy and pleasure in death.’

Death came at eight o’clock on the morning of 19 May when Anne was brought out on to the Little square of greensward where the carpenters had been hammering and shouting all the previous night as they put up the scaffold. The Queen had dressed carefully for her last public appearance, wearing a long robe of grey damask over a crimson underskirt, and looked, according to one eyewitness, ‘as gay as if she was not going to die’. The executioner, specially imported from Calais at a cost of £23 6s 8d, drew his sword from its hiding place in a pile of straw and it was all over. Head and trunk were bundled into a makeshift coffin and buried that same afternoon in the chapel of St. Peter-ad-Vincula hard by the execution ground. There were no mourners and it was left to Eustace Chapuys, Anne’s bitterest enemy, to pay her a final tribute. ‘No one ever showed more courage or greater readiness to meet death than she did’, he commented in a despatch to the emperor dated 19 May, and went on to tell his master that he had been told by a reliable source that both before and after receiving the sacrament Anne had sworn, on the peril of her soul’s damnation, that she had never been unfaithful to the King.

The King who had loved her and destroyed her wasted no time on mourning, not even on a decent interval of widowerhood. On 20 May he and Jane Seymour were betrothed in a private ceremony at Chelsea, and ten days later they were married in the chapel of York Place. Henry’s third wife was a small, quiet, colourless blonde in her late twenties, undistinguished by looks or noble birth. She had served both her predecessors as maid of honour, but her loyalties were said to lie with Queen Catherine. For this reason Chapuys welcomed the marriage, for he hoped and believed that the new Queen would befriend Catherine’s daughter.

Mary Tudor had suffered cruelly as a result of her parents’ divorce, enduring insult, humiliation, personal sorrow and physical fear which permanently ruined her health and spoilt her disposition. She had always ranged herself beside her mother on the domestic battlefront as, quite apart from her strong natural affections and deep religious convictions, she was bound to do - for if she admitted the justice of her father’s case, she would be admitting her own illegitimacy and denying her rights of inheritance.

During the early years of the struggle Mary had been left more or less alone, living in one or other of the royal manor houses scattered about the Home Counties and still chaperoned by her friend and Lady Governess, Margaret Countess of Salisbury. She had not seen her mother since Catherine’s expulsion from the Court in 1531, but she knew well enough what was happening to her and had been obliged to watch in helpless rage and misery while the wicked - especially Anne Boleyn -flourished and Catherine’s predicament grew steadily worse. This was damaging enough for a sensitive adolescent but it was not until the birth of Elizabeth that Mary’s troubles began in earnest.

Just as the King could not have two rival Queens in his realm without running the risk of looking ridiculous, he could not have two rival heiresses without running even more serious risks. Towards the end of September 1533, Mary’s chamberlain, Lord Hussey, was instructed to inform the Princess of her father’s pleasure ‘concerning the diminishing of her high estate’. Mary, standing full on her seventeen-year-old dignity, froze the embarrassed chamberlain with a cold Tudor eye. She was ‘much astonished’ that Hussey should have the impertinence to declare such a thing without a written authority from the King. A few days later came an order from William Paulet, Comptroller of the Royal Household, that Mary was to leave her present home, Newhall in Essex, for Hertford Castle. Mary demanded to be shown Paulet’s letter and there, for the first time in black and white, she saw herself baldly described as ‘the Lady Mary, the King’s daughter’. She tried sending a letter to her father, in the faint hope that a personal appeal might be able to move him, ‘for I doubt not’, she wrote with pathetic optimism, ‘but you take me for your lawful daughter born in true matrimony. If I agreed to the contrary I should offend God; in all other things Your Highness shall find me an obedient daughter.’

Henry’s response was to send a commission, headed by Dr. Simpson, Dean of the King’s Chapel, to visit Mary at Newhall. The King had been surprised and pained to hear that his daughter had so far forgotten her filial duty and allegiance as to ‘arrogantly usurp the title of Princess’ and pretend to be his heir presumptive. The commissioners proceeded solemnly to warn her of the folly and danger of her conduct and to point out that if she persisted, she would worthily deserve the King’s ‘high displeasure and punishment by law’. However, if she repented and conformed to his will, he might be graciously pleased ‘of his fatherly pity’ to forgive her and even to promote her welfare.

Mary may have been prepared for a rebuff, but to be accused of ‘arrogantly usurping’ a title she had held since birth and to be so accused by the one whose paternity had conferred that title on her was something monstrous enough to destroy her sense of identity for ever. But the former Princess of England had inherited stubborn characteristics from both her parents; she had her religious faith and her mother’s indomitable example to support her; she would not conform and so the battle between father and daughter was joined.

Mary did not have long to wait for the first consequences of her defiance. Early in November Eustace Chapuys heard with horror that ‘not content with having taken away from his own legitimate daughter the name and title of Princess’, the King was threatening to make her go and live as maid of honour to his base-born daughter. Nor was this an idle threat. A separate household had been set up for the baby Elizabeth at the old bishop’s palace at Hatfield and about a week before Christmas 1533, the Duke of Norfolk descended on Mary at Hertford Castle and bundled her off at half-an-hour’s notice to join the nursery establishment.

Mary had always known her father as a kindly, affectionate figure who used to carry her about in his arms showing her off proudly to foreign visitors and had once teased her at a solemn state function by pulling off her cap, so that her long reddish blonde hair had tumbled down over her shoulders. Now he seemed to have become a totally different person. Like her mother, Mary naturally ascribed this terrifying change to the malign influence of Anne Boleyn and at Hatfield she would be living in a house ruled by Anne’s relations. But if Mary was afraid she never showed it. When Norfolk asked her whether she did not think she should pay her respects to the princess, she answered fiercely that she knew of no princess in England except herself. If, with splendid scorn, the King acknowledged ‘Madame of Pembroke’s daughter as his own, then Mary would call her sister, just as she called Henry Fitzroy brother, but no more. Well then, said Norfolk, had she any message for the King ? None, came the immediate retort, ‘except that the Princess of Wales, his daughter, asks for his blessing’. Norfolk told her roundly that he dared not deliver such a message. ‘Then go away’, cried Mary, ‘and leave me alone.’

She was about to learn what it meant to be truly alone. Shut up at Hatfield, given (so Chapuys heard) the worst room in the house and forced to eat all her meals in the crowded Great Hall Mary was also learning the sour lessons taught by impotence, hatred and injustice. When Henry came to visit Elizabeth, she was kept out of sight. Chapuys believed this was Anne’s doing, that she was afraid the King’s resolution might weaken if he saw his elder daughter. Chapuys also heard that Anne had sent a message to her aunt, Lady Shelton, now Mary’s ‘governess’, telling her to give the girl a box on the ears ‘for the cursed bastard she is’.

Sometime during the spring of 1534 the royal commissioners visited the Princess Elizabeth’s household to exact the Oath of Succession from its inmates -that oath which, among other things, required the lieges to take the Lady Mary ‘but as a bastard and thus to do without any scruple of conscience’. The Lady Mary, of course, refused to swear. Not that it mattered, Lady Shelton told her roughly. It did not matter whether she surrendered her title or not, she was still a bastard whatever she did. But, added the lady, if she were the King, she would kick Mary out of the house for her disobedience and then she said something else which brought a new and colder fear.

Mary at this time had no means of communicating with Chapuys, the only friend she seemed to have, but terror sharpened her wits. She asked to see ‘a physician who formerly was her tutor and usual doctor’ who happened to be staying in the house. A private interview was refused but somehow she had to find a way of using this man as a messenger. She was able to see him in public and told him she had been so long without speaking Latin that now she could hardly say two words correctly. The doctor, unwittingly picking up his cue, suggested she should try and Mary, knowing that no one else in the room would be able to understand, told him that the King had been heard to say, only the day before, that he would have her beheaded for disobeying the laws of the kingdom. ‘Hearing which’, wrote Chapuys, ‘the physician was much astonished and knew not what to answer, except that the Princess’s Latin was not very good and he could not understand it.’ However, the small desperate subterfuge worked. The good doctor had understood enough of what his former pupil was trying to tell him and passed it on to Chapuys.

Lady Shelton’s spite regardless, Mary’s treatment actually improved a Little during the summer. She was allowed more servants and, by their means, was able to reopen her secret correspondence with Chapuys. But she saw any improvement as a trap of some sort intended to take her off her guard and told Chapuys - she was eighteen-and-a-half now - that her only hope was to die. She did, in fact, become seriously ill soon afterwards. Thomas Cromwell had been hinting that a lot of problems would disappear if only God would decide to take the Lady Mary to himself; but it would, nevertheless, have been highly embarrassing for the government if she were to die in her present circumstances and one of the royal physicians was sent to visit her. Dr. Buttes, a sensible, kindly man, suggested that the girl should he sent to be with her mother who, at least, could not be suspected of trying to poison her. Catherine got wind of this scheme and, grasping at a sudden straw of hope, wrote to Chapuys begging him to try and persuade the King ‘to do such a charity as to send his daughter and mine where I am’. She would nurse Mary herself and the ‘comfort and mirth’ they would have together would be half her cure. But Henry refused to contemplate such a thing. Catherine and Mary were causing him enough trouble separately - let them once be together and all the effort he had been expending on trying to break Mary’s will would be wasted. He also hinted that he suspected a security risk.

Although Catherine indignantly denied any knowledge of a plot, Chapuys had for some time been investigating the possibilities of getting Mary out of the country. He thought it should not be too difficult, provided the princess was somewhere fairly close to London and if an oared boat, independent of the tides and strong enough to fight off pursuit, was ready to take her to the mouth of the Thames, where one of the Emperor’s ships would be waiting.

In April 1535 it looked as if an opportunity had come. Mary had been at Greenwich with Elizabeth but had then been suddenly moved to a house about twelve miles from the river. Chapuys reported that it would be comparatively easy for a party of well mounted men to snatch her while she was out walking (it would be better to make it look like kidnapping for Mary’s own sake) and put her on board a ship below Gravesend. Mary herself was only too willing to co-operate, and no wonder, but the ambassador dared not act without authority. ‘The matter is hazardous’, he wrote conscientiously to the Emperor, ‘and Your Majesty will take it into due consideration.’ The Emperor would have liked to be able to rescue his cousin - he had been doing his best to persuade Henry to allow her to make a suitable marriage - but to abduct the daughter of a brother monarch smacked uncomfortably of brigandage. Charles was a cautious man. He considered too long and the opportunity was lost. There would be no great adventure for Mary - no wild ride across the Essex marshes to the sea. She fell ill again, the summer passed, and her hopes of deliverance faded.

As autumn approached Chapuys could smell danger on the wind. He could get no access to Mary and all his persistent, nagging protests and enquiries met with the same stonewalling response. There was not the slightest need for anyone to feel anxious about the Lady Mary, Cromwell assured him blandly, since no one was more concerned for her welfare than her own father. But Henry had tasted blood that year and Anne, who feared and hated Mary, was still beside him. Chapuys believed that the concubine would not rest until she had engineered the death of the legitimate heiress. He and Catherine were both afraid that the King meant to put Mary to the test over the Oath of Succession when Parliament met again. Then Catherine died - and even when her illness was known to be mortal Henry would not allow her daughter to go to her. A few months later Anne, too, was gone.