Mary Tudor (26 page)

Philip was not the only party to be uneasy about the marriage treaty. The terms were explicit enough. If Mary died first, and there were no children, Philip’s interest in the kingdom came to an end, and it passed by English law to the next heir. But what was English law in this respect? The law regarding real estate was that when an heiress married, her property passed to her husband in full ownership, for the span of his life – not hers. In other words, the wife’s estate only passed to her own heirs once her husband was dead. England had never had a ruling queen before (Matilda had only been
de facto
queen for a short period in 1141), and no one knew certainly whether the ‘woman’s estate’ applied to the realm, as it would have done to a private lordship. Renard reported early in 1554 that English lawyers were muttering unhappily about this, and believed that their doubts had helped to fuel the rebellion.
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There is no evidence of that, but the doubts were real enough. It was all very well to welcome Mary as their ‘Sovereign Lady’, but there was a sense in which this was a contradiction in terms, and that needed to be resolved.

Consequently, when Parliament met on 2 April, this was one of the matters on the agenda. It was dealt with simply enough by a bill that declared that the queen’s authority was identical with that of her predecessors, the ‘Kings of this realm’ – in other words, that the gender of the monarch was irrelevant to the powers of the office, or the processes of its transmission. A ‘woman’s estate’ did not apply to the realm. This was a decision of the utmost importance, both for Mary’s relatively short lifetime, and even more for the much longer and higher profile reign of her sister that followed.
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At the same time, the marriage treaty was ratified by converting it into a statute. This was unprecedented, and was a reflection partly of the unprecedented situation of having a ruling queen, and partly of suspicions that Philip would do exactly what he had (secretly) done in refusing to be bound by its limitations. As king he would have to respect the laws of the land – and his marriage treaty was now enshrined among the laws of England. By the time that Parliament was dissolved on 5 May, everything possible had been done to protect England from the long-dreaded advent of a foreign king.

Mary must have been aware of this legislation in more than a formal sense. Bills were not always drafted in full council, but nothing reached the floor of either House without having been discussed with the monarch. We do not know what her input into these discussions may have been, but from her later actions it seems clear that her concern to protect the interests of her kingdom from the fragility of her own condition was real enough. Some members appear to have thought that the bill about gender equality was designed to prevent her from using her sex as an excuse to escape the limitations imposed on earlier rulers – such as Magna Carta – but that was never part of the intention.
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The purpose of both this bill and the treaty ratification was entirely positive, and Mary certainly saw them in that light. Keenly aware of her own lack of political experience, she was only too pleased to have such issues resolved.

In one respect, however, Mary’s zeal betrayed her. The Church, from her point of view, was in an unsatisfactory limbo. She had told both Henry Penning (Cardinal Pole’s envoy) and Gianfrancesco Commendone months before that she considered herself to be the pope’s obedient daughter; but in April 1554 she was still legally the supreme head of the Church in England.
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She had stopped using the title, but continued to exercise the power, and in March 1554 a royal visitation had been conducted to weed out the remaining Protestant bishops and clergy. Stephen Gardiner, the Bishop of Winchester as well as lord chancellor, was the top-ranking bishop since both Canterbury and York were vacant, the former by the attainder of Thomas Cranmer, and the latter by the deprivation of Robert Holgate following the visitation. Gardiner was anxious to resolve the jurisdictional issue as quickly as possible – a view with which the queen entirely concurred. Unfortunately, there were other aspects to this problem. In the first place large amounts of monastic and chantry land had now passed into secular hands – usually by purchase – and the return of the papacy would inevitably invalidate the statutes by which that land had been acquired. Secondly, the Emperor (partly persuaded by Renard) not only knew this but believed that ‘the heretics’ were politically powerful. He was anxious (as he saw it) to protect the queen from rushing into a restoration of monastic lands that would stir up major political problems. He was also keenly aware that it would be an enormous coup for his son to negotiate the Catholic reconciliation after he was married to the queen.

Charles was therefore preventing Reginald Pole, who was named by the pope as his cardinal legate to the kingdom, from proceeding to England and thus forcing the issue. In his view the marriage must come first, followed by an agreement with the pope, before Pole could be called upon to discharge his mission.
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Gardiner understood both aspects of Imperial policy, and was extremely anxious to forestall it, because he was keenly aware that the pope was widely regarded in England (and not just by Protestants) as an interfering foreigner. To have the pope brought back on the coat-tails of a foreign king would do the Church considerable damage. It would be much better to resolve the religious issue (with or without Pole) before Philip set foot in England. After all, Philip would not want to come to a schismatical throne – would he?

Gardiner therefore set out in this second Parliament of the reign to resolve the issue of the royal supremacy. His bill does not survive, so we can only reconstruct its contents from second-hand accounts. One of its aims was apparently to revive the heresy laws, dating back to the early fifteenth century, which had been repealed under Edward VI. Another was ‘setting up again the power of the bishops, and dealing with the Pope’s authority’.
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As Gardiner had no authority to negotiate on the part of the papacy, this could only have meant a unilateral submission. Such a move would no doubt have suited Mary very well, but it would have left unresolved the whole issue of the Church lands. The bill was debated in council, where there were strong differences of opinion, but Gardiner must have prevailed in order to get the bill before Parliament at all, where it was read in the Commons for the first time on 9 April. The queen had, of course, been consulted, but what some of her advisers do not seem to have realised was the strength of her commitment to the measure. The bill, probably in an amended form, passed the Commons on 25 April.

For some reason that is not entirely clear, Lord Paget and several noblemen, including some other councillors, were seriously alarmed by this development. Paget, who was close to the Imperial ambassador, was probably aware that such an act, if it were to pass, would largely derail the Emperor’s agenda. Other nobles seem to have been mainly concerned at the prospect of a challenge to their property rights, and possibly by a major revival of episcopal authority. Paget was also deeply suspicious of the lord chancellor’s intentions for other reasons. He suspected him of a scheme to smuggle through a measure that would have had the effect of disinheriting Elizabeth, since Gardiner had failed to deal with her by the more drastic means of execution following the Wyatt rebellion.
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Paget even appealed at one point to Renard to persuade the queen to dissolve Parliament, apparently in order to avoid a confrontation.

Parliament was being difficult, but no more difficult than usual. It ratified the marriage treaty, and tidied up the anomalous position of the Durham diocese, which its predecessor had refused to do. On the other hand, it reduced the protection offered to Philip by the treason laws to an absolute minimum, and the Lords wanted nothing to do with Gardiner’s bill on ecclesiastical authority. Noailles had predicted as early as 23 April that what he revealingly described as the queen’s plan for restoring the Roman obedience would founder in the House of Lords and so it proved. The bill was rejected on the third reading on 1 May, and the Parliament was dissolved four days later.
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Paget had undoubtedly led and orchestrated the opposition to this measure, and Mary was furious. Whether he had deliberately taken an enormous risk, or genuinely did not know the extent of the queen’s involvement, we do not know, but he found himself seriously out of favour. He was not dismissed from the council, but was forced to retire to his estates for several weeks. Rather surprisingly, he also fell out with Renard. The two had worked together since August 1553, when Paget had been the first English councillor to embrace the idea of a Spanish marriage, and the ambassador had been deeply suspicious of Stephen Gardiner. Now that situation had changed. This was partly because of the fact that Renard and Gardiner were agreed about the need to get Elizabeth out of the way, if not by execution then certainly by exclusion, while Paget was protective of the princess. But it was also partly due to Paget’s actions in this Parliament.
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In spite of the fact that what Paget had done was clearly in the Imperial interest, Renard appears to have suspected that he was in league with ‘the heretics’, and that his loyalty to the queen was consequently questionable. On 13 May he wrote that ‘the Queen is being urged to imprison Paget’, along with the earls of Arundel and Pembroke. There was (and is) no evidence to support such suspicions, but the ambassador actually persuaded Mary to allow Imperial agents to open the correspondence of Sir John Mason, her ambassador in Brussels, on the grounds that he was intriguing with Paget. That she should have agreed to such a proposal says a great deal about Renard’s influence during the first year of her reign, and helps to explain why some of Mary’s own council should have voiced the opinion that this was an unprecedented and undesirable situation. As the time for Philip’s arrival began to approach, therefore, Gardiner’s star was in the ascendant, while Paget’s was definitely in eclipse.

Meanwhile the Church remained legally in schism. In fact Pole had been exercising his function as the pope’s representative, the cardinal legate, since about March (quite unlawfully). Thus he was secretly confirming the episcopal appointments which Mary made after the visitation of that month and issuing dispensations to anxious laymen to commit such sins as eating meat in Lent.
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Nevertheless, and in spite of the queen’s best efforts, the issue of the relationship between the English Church and the Holy See remained unresolved.

Philip was being infuriatingly uncommunicative. His proxy at the betrothal ceremony in March had been his father’s servant, the Count of Egmont, and Philip himself had sent neither word nor token. Charles became anxious, and sent a private letter to the Duke of Alba, whom he knew was to accompany his son to England, in an attempt to ensure that Philip behaved ‘in the right way’. The difficulties in which Philip was enmeshed were real enough, but he was making not the slightest effort to appear the ardent bridegroom. April passed into May, and still no word came from Valladolid. Below the surface, tension was beginning to increase again, and early in April a commission was put in place to resolve disputes between Philip’s Spanish courtiers and the English among whom they would be settled, bearing in mind that they would be accustomed to different legal systems.
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Early in May royal ships were sent out to scour the Western Approaches for any sign of his coming, and there must have been unexpressed doubts as to whether he would ever come at all. The French had made vague threats of intercepting him en route, and there were still mutterings about his arrival being greeted with armed insurrection. Renard, understandably, became increasingly neurotic, and worked out his unease on Paget and his friends. By the end of May an English household had been nominated for the king, numbering about 350 men headed by the Earl of Arundel as lord steward. Arundel was also steward of the queen’s house, so there was clearly an attempt to ensure unity of control, but otherwise the two establishments were distinct.
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Early in June word was finally received, although not from Philip himself, that he had actually set out from Valladolid on his way to the coast, and the Earl of Bedford was despatched as a special envoy to escort him on his voyage. On 11 June Philip’s harbinger, the Marquis of Las Navas, reached Southampton, and there were no doubt sighs of relief all round. Mary met Las Navas at Guildford on the 16th, and received from him the magnificent jewel that the Prince had now (at last) sent as a token of his affection. At the same time his English household was mobilised and despatched to the south coast to await his coming.
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The speed of that coming was, however, another matter. June had become July before he reached La Coruna and made contact with the Earl of Bedford. The main reason for this snail-like progress was the laborious effort that was needed to assemble a fleet of sufficient size to transport not only Philip and a retinue of several hundred but also the thousands of troops destined for the fighting front in the Low Countries. At the same time the whole operation was thrown into doubt by an urgent message that Charles sent to his son on 29 June. Marienbourg had fallen to the French, and the prince was therefore instructed to spend only a few days with his bride before proceeding to the Netherlands to shore up his father’s position. It was only when he was on the seas, and almost within sight of his destination, that these orders were rescinded. The French had retreated and Philip could therefore enjoy his nuptials in peace. One of the advantages of the poor communications was that none of this was known in England.