The Tudors for Dummies (AvaxHome Download) (22 page)

Both Mary and Elizabeth had tried to see Edward in the weeks before this

decree, but a paranoid Dudley had kept them away. Charles V's ambassador

got wind of it all and told the emperor that cousin Mary was being sidelined.

Charles sent a special mission, ostensibly to show concern for the king's

health but actually to watch out for Mary's interests. Charles's men were

told, politely, to butt out.

Passing on in a terrible storm

On 5 July a summer storm flooded whole areas and brought down trees. The

lightning was frightening and the wind terrifying. In the midst of all this, his

hair almost all gone, his toes and fingers gangrenous, Edward VI died. He

hadn't eaten properly for three weeks.

Dudley had dismissed his doctors, insisting that the king be treated (with

unknown medicine) by a `wise gentlewoman' of his choosing. Are you thinking

what we are? Although the cause of Edward's death was almost certainly pul-

monary tuberculosis there were those then (as there are now) who wondered

whether Dudley hadn't poisoned the boy. After all, Dudley's daughter-in-law

was now queen of England.

Reigning for Nine Days: Jane Grey

You might think that London, at the cutting edge of Protestantism, would have

been delighted to have a Protestant queen as opposed to the rabid Mary. But

in fact, the proclamation that Jane was queen was greeted with stony silence.

Bishop Ridley backed Jane, believing Edward's will to be valid. Bishop

Hooper, however, disagreed and saw Mary as some sort of divine retribution

on England for its sins: God was getting his own back.

Manoeuvring with Mary

Always suspicious of Dudley, Mary got out of Hunsdon and fled to her

Kenninghall estates in Norfolk. She proclaimed herself queen and wrote to

the Council, demanding their support.

Dudley was gobsmacked. The dithery woman who hadn't fled to cousin

Charles earlier now showed no intention of leaving the country, and the ships

he'd sent to stop Mary going to France went over to her side; she now had

cannon as well as moral support.

The Council turned Mary down and asked her politely to be a loyal subject

to Jane. But in reality Mary began to gather ever more support in East Anglia,

and not many people knew who Jane Grey was.

Defending Jane?

The Council were actually divided over the rival queens and it didn't help that

Simon Renard, Charles V's ambassador, stirred them up with gossip that Jane

Grey was just a stalking horse and that the French were behind the whole thing

to get Mary Queen of Scots (now 11) on the English throne. This was nonsense,

but who could be sure what sort of double game Dudley was playing?

Jane Grey had married Guildford Dudley under protest. She was 15 and head-

strong and fancied the earl of Hertford, but as was common for the times, poli-

tics were more important. On her wedding day Jane went home to her family

rather than sleep with Guildford, and when he finally did get her into bed she

went to Chelsea to get over the experience!

On 10 July she and Guildford, all dressed in white, went by river to the Tower

where Jane was shown the Crown Jewels. This spooked her because reality

dawned, and she absolutely refused to give Guildford the title of crown matri-

monial. Duke, maybe; king, never.

Four days later Dudley realised he had to sort Mary out himself. His younger

son Robert (whom appears again in Chapter 12, under Elizabeth [literally!])

hadn't managed to capture Mary and her forces were growing. But Dudley's

absence left a divided Council. At Baynard's Castle in London (more or less

where the Savoy Hotel now stands along the Strand) the earls of Arundel and

Pembroke led most of the Council to proclaim Mary as queen. It was now 19

July, the last day of Queen Jane's nine-day reign.

Dudley's army stopped at Cambridge. Here he heard that the earl of Oxford

had gone over to Mary and he waited to see what would happen. In London

the duke of Suffolk told his daughter that she was no longer queen. They'd

been abandoned by almost everybody.

Making Up With Mary

History is all about blowing with the wind. Men who were staunchly anti-

Catholic and anti-Mary now said how delighted they were that Mary was

queen. 160 Part III: Remembering the Forgotten Tudors: Edward VI and Mary

Charles V's ambassador, Simon Renard, thought that civil war would break

out, but that didn't happen. He reported to Charles that a miracle had taken

place in England. It must have seemed that way to Mary too, but she couldn't

show her surprise. Arundel, Paget and other members of the Council went to

Framlingham in Norfolk to kneel and kiss her hand.

Checking out her team

What did the new queen � the second in ten days � do with her Government,

which was full of Dudley's men?

She put her closest supporters, Catholics Robert Rochester and Francis

Englefield, into the Council, but they had no political experience. She

appointed the earl of Bath, but he too was a political lightweight.

She brought in men who'd crossed Dudley � Arundel, Paget, Rich and

Thomas Wharton. She made others wait, but eventually recruited the

marquis of Winchester (as lord treasurer) and the earls of Bedford,

Pembroke and Shrewsbury.

Mary stayed at Framlingham until 23 July and then came south, reaching

Essex by the 31st.

We're not talking huge distances here (today you can drive from Framlingham

to Essex in an hour and a half), but queens travelled with everything and the

kitchen sink, and expected gentlemen to put them up in their country houses

on the way. Forced entertainment on this scale could bankrupt people.

Stepping into power

Mary reached London on 5 August, by which time her supporters had grown

to 10,000. Dudley was awaiting execution in the Tower (see the nearby side-

bar `Off with his head!') and it was there that Mary went that day. She didn't

visit the ex-protector, nor Jane Grey, held across the Green from Dudley.

Events now moved fast.

Off with his head!

Mary's first hit was Dudley. On Tower Green on 22 queen's highness, of whom I here ask forgive-

August 1553 Dudley climbed the wooden scaffold ness.' But Mary didn't buy this last minute con-

and made a bold speech � `I have done wickedly trition and she let him die. The imprisoned Jane

all the days of my life and most of all against the Grey watched as Dudley's head rolled. Chapter 9: Changing with the Times: Edward, John, Jane and Mary 161

What about Mary's sister? We haven't mentioned Edward's other sister, kept her head down during the crisis that had Elizabeth, yet, have we? We put all that right in just passed. She entered London with Mary, Chapters 12�18 of this book. Elizabeth was 19 and as long as her sister had no children, when Mary became queen and she'd sensibly Elizabeth was the heir to the throne.

Thomas Howard, the aged duke of Norfolk who'd remained Catholic through-

out, was released from prison; so was Edward Courtenay, son of the marquis

of Exeter, and he was made earl of Devon. Stephen Gardiner was also released,

given his old see of Winchester back and made lord chancellor. Cuthbert

Tunstall, the ex-bishop of Durham, rejoined the Council having been released.

The Privy Council now had over 40 members and they were a pretty mixed

bunch in terms of politics and religion.

What the crisis proved was that Parliament's power would go on. If Jane Grey

had been accepted, the will of the monarch would have won the day and

everything that Parliament had built up over 20 years would have counted for

nothing.

Mary now faced urgent problems:

Her claim to the throne: Mary was still technically illegitimate, but she

could put this right via Parliament. Her coronation was more important,

and the Act of Succession would cover her in the meantime. The corona-

tion was fixed for 1 October; Parliament would be called four days later.

Religion: What was going to happen? Because Mary was a devout

Catholic, of course the `old faith' would come back, but how? Would the

Church of England be returned to its status under Henry VIII because all

decisions made since then had been made by a child?

Parliament restored Henry VIII's marriage to Mary's mother, Catherine of

Aragon (see Chapter 6), which of course made Elizabeth illegitimate, and

took away all reforms in religion carried out under Edward.

Priests all over the country didn't wait for Mary to direct religious changes.

They began to use the old Latin mass immediately and when Sir James Hales

protested to the lord chancellor about this, Gardiner told him to shut up and

obey his queen.

From 20 December 1553 Protestant services were illegal. What a miserable

Christmas many of Mary's subjects must have had that year! You can read

more on Mary's religious changes Chapter 10. 162 Part III: Remembering the Forgotten Tudors: Edward VI and Mary

Marrying Mary

Just like Henry VII when he became king (see Chapter 2), Mary needed a

strong (preferably male) heir who'd live long enough to run the country. So

marriage and child production were top of Mary's agenda.

Mary had a religious horror of sex (unlike Elizabeth we have no gossipy sto-

ries about girlhood flings), but she had to lie back and think of England as a

matter of duty: she was 37 and her biological clock was winding down.

But who would hubby be? As an honest person who took her promises seri-

ously, Mary remembered she'd once vowed that her cousin Charles, more

of a father figure to her than bullying Henry had ever been, would make that

decision for her. Charles had in fact been betrothed to Mary once himself,

but he was a 53-year-old widower now and wasn't likely to jump at the idea of

having Mary as his wife (have you seen the portraits of Mary?). But he had a

cunning plan . . .

Mary's marital options were:

Charles V's son, Philip: He was 26, a widower, a good Catholic, sexu-

ally and politically experienced and he'd one day inherit most of Europe

from his father (just think � the old Anglo�Spanish alliance dreamed of

by Henry VII � see Chapter 2).

Dom Luis: The younger brother of the king of Portugal. But Charles

didn't like him, so no go.

Edward Courtenay: The earl of Devon, he had a dash of Yorkist blood

and was a good Catholic. But he'd been brought up mostly in prison and

couldn't really cope with the decision-making of the outside world.

No contest really � it had to be Philip.

The Mary�Philip courtship was a long distance affair, with Simon Renard as the

go-between. Philip wasn't keen � in fact, in the Cate Blanchett film Elizabeth

he's always lurking in the shadows and he doesn't have any lines to say!

When the engagement was announced on 28 October 1553 the Council and

Parliament did their best not to scream in horror; a Spanish Catholic on the

throne of England!

Brokering the deal

The Council did their best but they were dealing with Charles, not Philip, and

he had his own agenda. Charles wanted his successor, his younger brother

Ferdinand, to become holy Roman emperor (it was an elected position) and Chapter 9: Changing with the Times: Edward, John, Jane and Mary 163

Philip would have the Spanish Netherlands. Philip, of course, knew nothing

about this. Charles needed Philip as king of England because although the

English would never give him real power, having his son as king would at

least mean that the English wouldn't interfere in the emperor's ongoing war

with France.

The arrangement sounded great to the English commissioners, who wrote up

a treaty that was signed in January 1554. By the time Philip knew what was

going on, it was too late to pull out.

Rebelling with Wyatt

Sir Thomas Wyatt, poet, courtier and lover of Anne Boleyn (Chapter 5 gives

the lowdown on Anne's flirtiness), had got off lightly under Henry VIII by

being allowed to keep his head. His son wasn't so lucky.

Mary was already (with that nasty word hindsight) a tragic, self-deluded

figure. Having seen portraits of Philip (like all Hapsburgs he had a huge chin

and tiny mouth) she said she was `half in love with him'. Oh dear!

Courtiers feared that Spaniards would take their places. Landlords were sure

they'd lose their property to foreigners. All over London, anti-Spanish broad-

sheets and ballads appeared and it was only a matter of time before a rebel-

lion happened.

The end of Jane There are few more tragic victims of the Tudors that failed and the best he could do was to than Jane Grey. Rumours flew that Wyatt's recite the Lord's Prayer in Latin while she said Rebellion had been carried out in her name it in English. Jane made a short speech to the (untrue) and that as long as she lived she'd crowd and only panicked a little when the blind- be a threat to Mary (probably untrue). Jane's fold was put on � because she was unable to husband, Guildford Dudley, was executed on find the block � `What shall I do? Where is it?' Tower Hill on 12 February, and Jane saw his

The axe came down and Jane was dead. The headless corpse in the chapel of St Peter ad

16-year-old was just five feet tall, so small that Vincula before she was taken to the block on

her body could be placed under two stones in Tower Green. The lieutenant of the Tower, John

St Peter's chapel. Alongside her lay two more Brydges, steadied her and she was accompa-

Tudor victims � Anne Boleyn and Catherine nied by her ladies, Nurse Ellen and Mrs Tilney.

Howard. Dr Feckenham, the abbot of Westminster, had been sent to convert Jane to Catholicism but 164 Part III: Remembering the Forgotten Tudors: Edward VI and Mary

The men of Kent, the Midlands and Devon (what, again?) planned a three-

pronged protest march on London to force Mary to change her mind. As

it turned out, only the Kent contingent actually got there: 3,000 men under

Thomas Wyatt. The only troops Mary had were the London trained militia

and they didn't seem too keen to kill fellow Englishmen for the sake of a

Spaniard who'd never set foot in the country. Even so, they refused to open

the gates to Wyatt and after a few skirmishes the rebels were broken up and

about 100 ringleaders executed, including Wyatt himself, who went to the by-

now-much-used block on Tower Green.

Mary was taking no chances. She had Jane Grey put to death (see the nearby

sidebar `The end of Jane', and later that month Jane's father was also exe-

cuted. Mary had heard the scuttlebutt that Edward Courtenay, the earl of

Devon, was out to marry Elizabeth, and because the girl was 17 years Mary's

junior, she had a lot more potential child-bearing years ahead of her. So the

same day as Jane's execution, Elizabeth was arrested and held in the Tower

until the Wyatt disturbances died down.

Sorting out the pre-nup

The marriage arrangements between Mary and Philip were complicated.

Philip didn't really want to know. He daren't openly oppose his father,

Charles V, but he had no intention of being bound by the restrictions to

power that Mary and the Council were trying to impose on him. Mary, on the

other hand, was very interested in the terms of the union, for they affected

not just her but the entire future of the kingdom.

The legal position of women was peculiar: