Tudor (45 page)

Church attendance and vocations to the priesthood had dropped dramatically under Henry VIII and still more under Edward VI. The Marian reforms brought a new sense of energy. Far from being backward-looking, Mary's English Catholic renewal anticipated measures not formally adopted in the wider church until the Council of Trent's final sessions in 1562–3 after Mary's death.
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At court too there was vigour and life. With King Philip at Mary's side there were masques and sporting combats to enjoy. Mary had never lived surrounded solely by pious Catholics, as is sometimes claimed.
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She soon welcomed even the return of the Greys to court,
placing Jane's sister, Lady Katherine Grey, in her Privy Chamber. Amongst other former enemies were Guildford Dudley's brothers, who competed in some of the combats. All, however, were expected to conform to the religion of the state. Those who were incorrigible were encouraged to go into exile. Those who did not leave, or could not do so, were dealt with under the heresy laws revived in January 1555. The queen expected a few exemplary punishments of heretics to follow, but this proved wide of the mark. Although Protestants remained a minority there was a strong Protestant commitment, in the south-east of England in particular, where people had embraced the Edwardian reforms and iconoclasm with enthusiasm.
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284 people, most of them ordinary men and women, stood bravely by their beliefs and were burned at the stake during Mary's reign. It would earn her the late seventeenth-century sobriquet, ‘Bloody Mary', that has come to define her.
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To those of us for whom capital punishment is barbarous, it remains difficult to appreciate the mindset of this earlier age. In the sixteenth century it was commonplace to be hanged for theft. The promotion of heresy was considered a worse crime, for it was, potentially, to steal souls. Several of those Mary burned had themselves overseen burnings under Henry VIII. Amongst the most remembered deaths under Mary is that of Hugh Latimer, the Bishop of Worcester. Burned alongside the Bishop of London, Nicholas Ridley, he spoke the famous, if apocryphal, last words, ‘Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.' Yet it was Latimer who had overseen the execution of the Observant Franciscan suspended in chains over a ‘slow fire' fuelled by a famous effigy of a Welsh saint during the reign of Henry VIII. It had taken two hours for the monk to die, during which time he was mocked by his executioners as Latimer stood by.
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Anabaptists (who believed in adult baptism and would not bear arms or take oaths) had been burned even under Edward VI, and would be burned under Elizabeth I too.
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Nevertheless, the numbers Mary burned are striking: they were unprecedented in England and unmatched in Europe.
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The queen's actions were in the past ascribed to those of a bigoted woman in thrall to priests, an act of revenge, or born of sheer desperation. In truth she was behaving as the ruthless Tudor monarch she was. The burnings began in February 1555 when she was at the height of her power, and her reasons concerned the future, not the past. She wished to eliminate a destabilising minority that had grown exponentially during her brother's reign. Reaction varied. In some areas people would hide wood to thwart the authorities as they built the stake and bonfire, in other areas people sold strawberries amongst a cheerful crowd. The image, however, of those burning pyres still haunts the imagination, along with the stories of the lowly who died: an old man hobbling to the stake ‘willingly, angrily and pertinaciously', and behind him a young blind boy, also put to death.

It was Mary's baby that was most crucial, however, in securing the future she envisaged, and in April there were whispers that it was not proceeding normally, even that she was bewitched. It was decided that a close eye should be kept on Elizabeth, and Mary called her sister to Hampton Court, where a superficial reconciliation followed, with Elizabeth falling on her knees swearing she was a true subject.

The twenty-two-year-old princess had matured into a young woman described as ‘attractive rather than handsome', ‘well formed with a good skin, although olive'.
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This was in stark contrast to her sister Mary, who looked unwell and old. In May it emerged that Elizabeth's household had employed the magician John Dee to cast the queen's horoscope. He was arrested. Rumours sprang up in the same month that Mary had delivered a son, and there was an explosion of joy with street parties set up across London. Then it emerged that the expected birth date had passed without any sign of a child and new whispers began that Mary was not pregnant at all, merely ill. Mary clung on to her hopes of impending motherhood until August, when at last she accepted there was no baby.
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It is impossible to be certain what had caused Mary's phantom pregnancy. She had for years suffered menstrual abnormalities and was by this time very thin. Her symptoms are suggestive, however, of autoimmune hyperthyroid disease, which affects a sufferer's mental state, and this includes documented cases of delusional pregnancy.
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The public were relieved to see Mary at the end of August when she and Philip rode from Hampton Court through London to Greenwich. They thronged the streets and as she came into view there were great shouts in acclamation. But everything Mary had fought so hard to achieve was now unravelling. Will-power, courage, intelligence, ruthlessness; these could do nothing to change her fertility, or improve her health. No one except Mary now believed it was still possible she would have a child, and it was evident Elizabeth, established in law as Mary's successor, would one day succeed her.

Two days later Mary bid farewell to her husband, who was obliged to return to the Continent. His father now wished to end ruling his vast empire and retire into private life. In October 1555 Charles V renounced his sovereignty of the Netherlands in favour of Philip, and in January 1556 the crown of Spain.
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Philip suggested his distressed wife immerse herself in matters of business, but Mary dreaded facing what she knew was coming. Her enemies scented weakness, for without a child Mary's plans had no future, and soon she would be facing repeated attempts on her throne and her life.

32

A FLICKERING LIGHT

Q
UEEN
M
ARY WAS RARELY SEEN IN PUBLIC IN THE SUMMER OF
1556. In private, however, she appeared drawn and was sleeping badly. A plot to overthrow her had emerged that spring and left her badly shocked. When a conspirator from inside the exchequer informed on his friends several senior Protestant gentry were exposed. Ten were executed, but it had since emerged that members of Elizabeth's household had known of the plot. They included Elizabeth's governess Kat Astley, whom the princess was said to love with a strength ‘to be wondered at'.
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Kat was sent to the Tower for several months, and to Elizabeth's distress, was then dismissed from service. However, Mary also had to reconsider what to do with Elizabeth.

Philip wrote begging Mary to do nothing to imperil Elizabeth's future accession for, in default of her claim, the English throne would pass to Mary, Queen of Scots and into French hands. Mary decided, reluctantly, to try and make amends with her sister. Two servants delivered a diamond ring to Elizabeth as a mark of Mary's faith in her. But then in July yet another plot was uncovered. A schoolmaster in Yorkshire claimed to be Courtenay and announced his intention to marry Elizabeth. It was a further reminder that Elizabeth was the intended beneficiary of all the plots against Mary. The pretender was executed in short order and the real Courtenay died in Padua in September. But when, in November, a plan by leading Protestants to
surrender Calais to the French was uncovered, Mary's depression worsened. She spent her time, it was said, ‘in tears, regrets and writing letters to bring back her husband'. Philip replied to her in as kindly a manner as he could, but he had his own kingdoms to run and his demands that Elizabeth be married to an Imperial ally were painful reminders of Mary's childlessness. After reading one such letter she threw her mirror across the room in self-disgust.

Yet Mary also did her best to do her duty to her husband and her country, calling Elizabeth to court that Christmas. The princess arrived in London with 200 liveried men on horseback and was cheered through the City in scenes reminiscent of Mary's visit to her gravely ill brother in February 1553. Elizabeth had written telling Mary she wished that there were such ‘good surgeons for making anatomies of hearts that they might show my thoughts to your Majesty'. These thoughts were all loyal, Elizabeth promised, and she assured her sister her deeds would supply what ‘my thoughts cannot declare'.
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Mary was now to take her up on that. Having received her with great honour and displays of kindness, she asked Elizabeth to accept a marriage with Philip's cousin, the Duke of Savoy.
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Elizabeth would later smile at the memory of her conversation with her sister.
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Mary would not force an unwanted marriage on her and she therefore had the upper hand. Three days later Elizabeth headed back to Hatfield in Hertfordshire, still happily un-betrothed. When Philip wrote insisting Mary try harder to bring Elizabeth round, Mary shot back that perhaps he should come to England to help her achieve this feat. When Philip did at last return, in March 1557, he brought his illegitimate sister, Margaret of Palma, as well as Christina of Denmark, to also set them on the task of Elizabeth's marriage.

To Mary, Philip was again the attentive spouse. ‘His manner and character are such as to capitivate anyone', a Venetian recorded, and in truth ‘no one could have been a better husband to her and so good a one'. Mary saw increasingly, however, ‘that no one believes in the possibility of her having progeny, so that day by day she sees her authority, and the respect induced by it, diminish'.
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While Mary always
received Elizabeth ‘with every sort of graciousness and honour' and never conversed ‘with her on any but agreeable subjects', it was clear that in seeing her sister Mary was transported back to the humiliations of her youth and was tormented by the knowledge this ‘illegitimate child of a criminal' held the eyes of the nation as her successor.
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Elizabeth never forgot Mary's humiliation, or the dangers Mary faced, and she was determined she would never be placed in a similar situation. Meanwhile, to Philip's continued frustration, Elizabeth easily batted away the enticements of his sister and Christina of Denmark to marry his cousin. She had no intention of limiting her future freedom of action.

Philip had better luck in his desire to engage his reluctant wife in his war against France. Shortly after his arrival in England there was yet another plot against Mary. A group of between thirty and a hundred Protestant exiles landed at Scarborough from a French ship. The traitors were rounded up and executed with twenty-four others. But Mary had grown tired of French provocation and, encouraged by her husband, she declared war on France that summer. She certainly had a better cause for war with France than her father had ever had.

There was early success for Mary's armies with the English capturing Saint-Quentin along with their Spanish allies. ‘Both sides fought most choicely', a Spanish officer wrote, ‘and the English best of all.'
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But the war had triggered a falling out between Mary and France's papal ally, Paul IV. This did not amount to a religious division between the papacy and England, but it was a grave political row nonetheless. Born before the battle of Bosworth, Paul IV was an ultraconservative Neapolitan, violently anti-Spanish and so bad-tempered it was said that sparks flew from his heels as he walked. To punish Mary for her war he recalled Cardinal Pole to Rome, intending to try him as a heretic for his past efforts to find an accommodation with the Lutherans on the theology of justification by faith alone. Mary, astonished at the Pope's ingratitude for all Pole's work in healing the schism, refused to send him.

Relations with the Vatican embittered, things also now went badly
in France. On New Year's Day 1558, 27,000 French troops attacked Calais, which was quickly lost. Although Calais had long cost as much to defend as it made in trade, this was a national humiliation; a reminder of all England had lost in France since the death of Henry V, and it marked the beginning of a terrible year. An influenza epidemic struck down a population weakened by successive harvest failures. Up to 18 per cent of the English population succumbed to sickness or hunger in 1557–8: the highest death rate recorded in England for another 200 years and equivalent to about ten million deaths today.
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With Philip absent again in Europe, Mary's health also worsened with bouts of insomnia, depression, loss of vision, headaches and weakness.
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She had another false pregnancy and in March, when she wrote her will, she bequeathed her throne to the child she insisted she was carrying eight months after last seeing her husband. By then, the more hard-headed Elizabeth was already planning with the surveyor of her estates, the thirty-seven-year-old Sir William Cecil, for Mary's death and her own accession.

Aged twenty-four, ‘her forehead large and fair', her nose ‘somewhat rising in the midst' and the whole ‘compass of her countenance somewhat long', foreign observers found Elizabeth ‘proud and haughty'. She defended her mother's honour by arguing that Anne Boleyn had refused to live with the king unless they were married. She also defended her own, claiming that since her parents had believed themselves to be married when she was born, she was legitimate. Above all she ‘gloried' in her father, ‘with everybody saying she resembled him more than the queen does and he therefore always liked her'.
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She was certainly proving as capable as her father in spotting a good servant.