She Wolves (33 page)
Jane must have been frightened to find herself deserted by everyone and a prisoner in the Tower. Her father had been arrested soon after Mary’s accession but was quickly released after Frances Brandon interceded for him with Mary.
38
She does not seem to have interceded for her daughter, however. Mary had always been fond of Jane and did not believe that she was responsible for her actions. It appears that she privately told Jane she would be released once events surrounding her attempted coup had calmed down. Jane must have been relieved to hear this and quickly settled into life at the Tower. She may have gained some satisfaction when Northumberland was also brought to the Tower as a prisoner and was disgusted when he converted to Catholicism in an attempt to save himself from execution. Jane is reported to have watched Northumberland going to church before his execution from her window and it is likely that she felt a certain satisfaction that the man who brought her so low was going to die. His conversion did not save him and he was beheaded at the Tower on 21 August 1553.
39
Jane kept in good spirits during her imprisonment and the author of the
Chronicle of Queen Jane
dined with her on 29 August 1553 at the house of Partrige, the Lieutenant of the Tower. According to his account, she was anxious for news of London:
‘The Quenes majesty is a mercyfull princes; I beseech God she may long contynue, and sende his bonntefull grace upon her’. After that, we fell in matters of religion, and she axed what he was that preached at Polles on Sonday before; and so it was tolde hir to be one [blank in original]. ‘I praie you,’ quod she, ‘have they masse in London?’ ‘Yay for suthe’, quod I, ‘in some places’. ‘Yt may so be,’ quod she, ‘yt is not so strange as the sodden convertyon of the late duke [Northumberland]; for who wolde have thought’ saide she, ‘he would have so don?’ Yt was answered her, ‘Perchance he thereby hoped to have had his pardon’. ‘Pardon?’ quod she, ‘we worthe him! He hath brought me and our stocke in most miserable callamyty and mysery by his exceeding ambicion.’
40
Jane had not forgiven Northumberland and ranted for some time over the meal about his wickedness.
Despite her anger at Northumberland, Jane was probably comfortably housed in the Tower and may even have been relieved to be spared her parents’ company. Although she had an assurance from Mary that she would be spared, it was necessary that she and the other conspirators be put to trial and on 13 November 1553 Jane, Guildford, his brothers Henry and Ambrose, and Thomas Cranmer the Archbishop of Canterbury were led out of the Tower to the Guildhall for their trials.
41
They walked in procession behind a headsman carrying an axe turned away from them and Jane must have looked striking dressed in black with a black velvet book hanging from her dress and another in her hand. The verdict of the trial was predictable. All of the accused were sentenced to death, being returned to the Tower with the headsman’s axe facing towards them. Despite the verdict, Jane must have felt certain that she would be released and on 28 December she was given the liberty of the Tower and the freedom to walk in its gardens.
No doubt Mary meant to release Jane once memory of the coup had faded. However, on 25 January, the council heard that a rebellion, led by Thomas Wyatt, had flared up in Kent.
42
That same day it was also discovered that the Duke of Suffolk had mysteriously vanished from his London residence. The rebellions were aimed at Mary’s proposed marriage to Philip of Spain and quickly gained public support. By 30 January, Wyatt’s army was camped at Blackheath and Greenwich.
43
Mary’s own quick thinking saved the situation and she was able to rally the people of London to her cause, crushing the rebellion. With the defeat of Wyatt, attention then turned to Suffolk who had ridden north trying to stir up the people against the Spanish marriage.
44
He gained little support and eventually fled to his manor at Astley where he was found hiding in a hollow tree. Suffolk was quickly arrested and brought to the Tower. Although she played no part in these activities his actions signed Jane’s death warrant. Jane understood this and wrote to him soon after his arrest, writing ‘Father, although it hath pleased God to hasten my death by you, by whom my life should rather have been lengthened, yet I can so patiently take it, that I yield God more hearty thanks for shortening my woeful days.
45
Suffolk’s actions and Wyatt’s rebellion illustrated to Mary and her council the danger of allowing Jane to live. On 12 February, Guildford Dudley was led out to a scaffold on Tower Hill and beheaded.
46
Despite ordering her death, Mary still appears to have remembered Jane fondly and sent the Dean of St Paul’s to her in an attempt to save her soul through conversion to Catholicism.
47
Jane received him politely and the pair debated for some time, probably keeping Jane’s mind off her approaching death. Nevertheless she remained staunch in her evangelical Protestantism until the end.
On 12 February 1554, the sixteen-year-old Lady Jane Grey was led out to a scaffold on Tower Green.
48
She wore the same dress that she had worn to her trial and carried a book, praying all the way to the scaffold. Jane then mounted the scaffold and gave a dignified speech, admitting that she had acted unlawfully but denying that the guilt was hers. She then recited a psalm and it was only then that her nerves and her youth began to show:
Forthwith she untied her gown. The hangman went to her to help her of therewith; then she desired him to let her alone, turning towards her two gentlewomen, who helped her off therwith, and also with her frose past and neckerchief, giving to her a fayre handkercher to knytte about her eyes.
Then the hangman kneeled downe, and asked her forgeveness whome she forgave most willingly. Then he willed her to stand upon the strawe; which doing, she sawe the block. Then she sayd, ‘I pray you dispatch me quickly’. Then she kneeled down, saying, ‘Will you take it of before I lay me downe?’ and the hangman answered her, ‘No, madame’. She tyed the kercher about her eyes; then feeling for the blocke, saide, ‘What shall I do? Where is it?’ One of the standers-by guyding her thereunto, she layde her heade down upon the block, and stretched forth her body and said; ‘Lorde, into thy hands I commende my spirite!’ And so she ended.
49
No one in England saw the execution of Lady Jane Grey as anything other than judicial murder and her death clouded Mary’s reputation. However, in spite of the popular disapproval which Jane’s execution generated, she was never popular in England and her death incurred no outpouring of public grief. Lady Jane Grey was used as a pawn by her relatives and even though she allowed herself to be used and appears to have relished the chance to wear the crown she was still an innocent victim of the actions of others. Lady Jane Grey was not born to be a queen but her royal blood placed her close enough to be in danger, a fact that was entirely out of her control. Opinionated and bigoted, Jane often appears in an unattractive light but it was she who won the posthumous popularity battle with Mary Tudor and she is remembered as a tragic victim of the Catholic queen. However, during their lifetimes when the two were pitted against each other, it was Mary who proved overwhelmingly the more loved. It was only later, during her own disastrous reign that Mary Tudor’s own reputation became notorious.
Bloody Mary
Mary I
Mary I was the first effective queen regnant of England and she swept to power on a wave of popular support. She died just five years later universally hated, with bonfires lit in the street to celebrate her death. Today she is remembered as ‘Bloody Mary’, a bigoted Catholic so secure in her convictions that she burnt her own subjects in an attempt to purge England of Protestantism. Mary Tudor had a difficult life and although personally kind and likeable, she was used as a model of an evil queen by her half-sister, Elizabeth I. Mary’s ideas were still essentially medieval and it is appropriate that her medieval attitude caused much of her unpopularity. Mary Tudor was never able to see that England had changed dramatically from the time of her childhood. In her essential attitude she was the last medieval Queen of England.
Mary Tudor was the only surviving child of Henry VIII and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, being born on 18 February 1516.
1
As their only child, Mary was adored by both her parents during her childhood and her father loved to display her to visitors to his court.
2
Mary was a pretty child and grew up to resemble her father. According to a description of her given by the French ambassador in 1541, Mary was ‘of middle stature, and is in face like her father, especially about the mouth, but has a voice more manlike, for a woman, than he has for a man’.
3
For Henry, Mary was a useful diplomatic tool and her earliest childhood was dominated by various betrothals to European royalty. Henry also saw Mary’s birth as a promise that he and Catherine would soon have living sons. Although Mary’s sex was, of course, a disappointment to her father, the fact that here at last was a healthy child, outweighed any other disadvantage.
Mary would have known from her earliest childhood that her destiny was to marry a foreign prince. However, as she grew older she must have become increasingly aware of her position as her father’s heiress. Catherine of Aragon’s last pregnancy occurred in 1518 and by the early 1520s it must have been clear to both Henry and Catherine that they would have no further children together. Catherine of Aragon, herself the daughter of a female monarch, accepted this early and arranged for Mary to have an education suitable for a future ruler. In her adulthood, Mary could read and write in English and Latin, speak French and understand Spanish.
4
She was also musical, being able to sing, dance and ride. Henry considered Mary his heir. In 1525 she was sent to Ludlow to govern as Princess of Wales, the only female ever to hold this title in her own right.
5
Mary stayed in Ludlow for eighteen months, returning to London in 1527.
6
Mary returned to a court very different to the one she had left in 1525. By 1527, Henry had met Anne Boleyn and had instigated his divorce proceedings against Catherine of Aragon. Mary probably first heard of her parents’ divorce from gossip in her household. She must have been shocked and probably did not believe it at first. Mary always supported Catherine and remained loyal to her mother until her own death. She was with her mother at Windsor when Henry rode away from Catherine for the final time, to never see her again.
7
The close relationship between Mary and Catherine frightened Henry. In May 1533 he forbade them to communicate with each other. Their correspondence continued secretly, but they were never to see each other again and Mary felt the separation from her mother keenly. In April 1533 Mary was informed of Henry’s second marriage and her own illegitimacy. The loss of her status and title hit Mary hard and worse was to follow when she was sent to serve her infant half-sister, Elizabeth, in December 1533.
Mary had been stripped of her status as Henry’s heiress when he divorced her mother. The birth of Elizabeth in September 1533 gave Henry a new heiress. Elizabeth was given her own household at Hatfield House and Mary was forced to join her. Mary did not prove as malleable as Henry and Anne Boleyn hoped and she refused to cooperate once in Elizabeth’s household. In March 1534 Mary had to be carried struggling into her litter when she refused to move with Elizabeth’s household from Hatfield.
8
That proved to be a humiliating experience for Mary and the next time the household moved, she entered her litter without force. However once inside, Mary had her litter bearers run so that she arrived at her destination an hour before Elizabeth and therefore occupied the chief place on arrival. This must have given Mary a measure of personal satisfaction but in reality she was powerless to alter her situation. In spring 1534, Mary was locked in her room with a guard at the door when she refused to take the oath of succession that bastardised her and denied her parents’ marriage.
9
Mary apparently felt desperate and secretly petitioned her cousin Emperor Charles V to smuggle her out of England.
10
Nonetheless she was closely guarded and any chance of escape was missed.
The death of her mother in January 1536 was a further blow for Mary and she must have felt totally isolated. She still held out against Anne Boleyn’s efforts to befriend her and after Anne’s death Mary wrote to her father’s first minister, Thomas Cromwell, to ask for his help in reconciling her with her father.
11
Mary believed that Anne Boleyn was the sole cause of her mistreatment and she must have hoped that with Anne gone, Henry would welcome her again as his legitimate daughter. Mary’s illusions about her father were shattered when, following her approach to Cromwell, a commission was sent to her at Hunsdon to extract the oath of succession from her. Mary once again stood out against Henry’s agents but eventually without her mother’s influence she gave in, signing a document that acknowledged that her parents had never been married and her own illegitimacy.
12
Mary never forgave herself for betraying her mother and this single act contributed to much of the unhappiness she experienced in her later life. Her father’s harsh treatment of her in the summer of 1536 also shattered any illusions she had about him. In her later life, Mary spoke of Henry with respect, but never with any trace of admiration or affection.
13
Rumours later accredited Mary with having Henry’s body exhumed and his heart burnt.
14
It is unlikely that this ever occurred but, certainly, Mary saw Henry as the man who had destroyed both her happiness and that of her beloved mother.
Mary’s capitulation pleased Henry and she was invited back to court and given her own household again. However she was not legitimised and lost any status she had as heir apparent with the birth of her halfbrother Edward in October 1537. Mary remained in her father’s favour for the rest of his life and acted as his court hostess from the death of Catherine Howard until his marriage to Catherine Parr in 1543.
15
In 1544, Mary was restored to the succession by an act of parliament but even this triumph must have rankled, as she remained illegitimate.
16
Despite her illegitimacy, Mary remained of interest to the European powers and received several offers of marriage. It is probable that she wished to marry and have children, but her father would never allow her to leave the country. The report of a French ambassador relates how Mary greatly desired to have children.
17
The death of Henry VIII in January 1547 left Mary as a wealthy independent landowner and heir presumptive to England but changed little in her personal situation.