Tudors (History of England Vol 2) (37 page)

‘We heard you speak to yourself, but what you said we know not.’

‘I was praying to God.’

One of his attendants took him in his arms. ‘I am faint,’ he said. ‘Lord, have mercy upon me and take my spirit.’ The day of his death was, according to the
Grey Friars’ Chronicle
, greeted by signs and wonders in the heavens. A storm broke over London and the summer afternoon became dark; great trees were uprooted, the streets turned into rivers, and the hail lay in the city’s gardens as red as blood. It was said that the grave of Henry VIII had opened and that the old king had risen in protest at the defiance of his will.

Mary, alerted to all possible dangers, had fled from her manor house two days before to the relative safety of her estate at Kenninghall in Norfolk, where she was among friends and allies. The death of Edward was kept secret for three days, in order that all Northumberland’s preparations could be completed. Northumberland spoke of him as if he were still alive.

Lady Jane Grey was brought to London, and on 9 July was told that the king wished to speak to her. She was taken to Northumberland’s manor, Sion House, where she was greeted by the duke and certain other lords. ‘The king’, Northumberland told her, ‘is no more.’ He then explained the conditions of the new will, making Lady Jane the sovereign. Having spoken, he and the other lords fell to their knees in front of her. She received the news with alarm. The Crown could not be for her. She was unfit. But then she recovered. She raised her hands in prayer and asked God for grace to govern well.

On the same day Mary learned the fate of her younger brother. She sat down and wrote a letter to the most prominent noblemen of the kingdom. ‘My lords,’ she wrote, ‘we greet you well and have received sure advertisement that our deceased brother the king, our late sovereign lord, is departed to God’s mercy.’ She went on to say that ‘it seemeth strange that the dying of our said brother upon Thursday at night last past, we hitherto had no knowledge from
you thereof’ before demanding that ‘our right and title to the crown and government of this realm to be proclaimed in our city of London’. It is reported that the lords looked into one another’s faces uneasily, and that their wives sobbed. A reply was sent ordering Mary not to ‘vex and molest’ the people of England with her false claim.

On 10 July the heralds-at arms announced the accession of Queen Jane in Cheapside, Paul’s Cross and Fleet. There is no evidence of rejoicing, or even of general acceptance. The crowds responded with silence, if not with open discontent, their faces ‘sorrowful and averted’. One chronicler reports that a vintner’s boy, Gilbert Potter, cried out that ‘the Lady Mary has the better title’; he was seized and led away. His ears were severed at the root on the following morning.

It might have been thought that Northumberland was in a pre-eminent position. He had control of the fleet as well as the treasury; he commanded the fortresses and garrisons of the land. Mary had as yet no army at her disposal; she had only the members of her household. But all Northumberland’s power was not enough in the face of her determined opposition and the evident fury of her supporters. The lawful succession to the throne of England could not be compromised by double-dealing. The crisis, of Northumberland’s own making, had broken over them all. Some of the councillors secretly doubted him. Others were confused and uncertain. William Cecil armed himself and made plans to flee the realm.

Northumberland had decided to detain Mary, by force, and bring her to London. If he had acted sooner, even before Edward’s death, he might have succeeded in destroying her. It was first believed that the armed party against her would be led by Jane Grey’s father, the duke of Suffolk, but the new queen’s protestations prevented the move. Instead Northumberland himself would march from London, by way of Shoreditch, with a retinue of 600 armed men. The citizens watched them leave. ‘The people press to see us,’ he remarked, ‘but not one sayeth God speed us.’ He had asked his colleagues to remain faithful to him, but he could not be entirely sure of their loyalty.

Mary stood her ground. She was resolute and defiant on the
model of her father; she had a stern Tudor sense of majesty, allied with an awareness of her religious mission to save England from heresy. It had been thought that she might flee to the emperor in Brussels, but why should a queen abandon her realm? Supporters flocked to her, with the earl of Sussex and the earl of Bath among the first of them. The people from the towns and villages of the region took up their weapons. It seemed that the whole of East Anglia had risen for her. The city of Norwich proclaimed her as rightful sovereign. A small navy of six ships, sent out by Northumberland to guard the seaways off the Norfolk coast, defected to Mary’s camp. When she went out to review her new troops the cry went up ‘Long live our good Queen Mary!’ She removed from Kenninghall to Framlingham Castle, in Suffolk, where she might repel any armed force. Yet she was still in the utmost danger. If she had been defeated and come to trial, she would have been declared guilty of treason. The fate of the nation, and of her religion, was now at stake.

Northumberland had taken his men to Cambridgeshire, where Newmarket had been chosen as the rendezvous for the army made up of tenants from various noble estates. But when the report of the navy’s defection to Mary reached that place, the men began to mutiny; they declared that they refused to serve their lords against Queen Mary. Northumberland sent an express message to the council demanding reinforcements and was given ‘but a slender answer’. The members of the council, in the absence of their presiding genius, began to entertain doubts about the wisdom of the entire enterprise. As a contemporary chronicler put it, ‘each man then begun to pluck in his horns’.

As the radical preachers continued their pulpit campaign against Mary, William Cecil and others began to organize a
coup d’état
. They had been gathered in the Tower, close to Queen Jane herself, where they remained under the observation of a garrison loyal to Northumberland. On Wednesday 19 July, with Northumberland’s forces in open rebellion, the councillors managed to leave the Tower and gather at Baynard’s Castle on the north shore of the Thames about three-quarters of a mile above London Bridge.

They were joined here by the Lord Mayor, the aldermen and other prominent citizens. The earl of Arundel spoke first. If they
continued to support the claims of Lady Jane Grey, civil war was unavoidable, with the distinct possibility that foreign powers would also intervene. No fate would be more unhappy for England and its people. The earl of Pembroke then rose and, taking his sword out of his scabbard, announced that ‘this blade shall make Mary queen, or I will lose my life’. Not one voice was heard on behalf of Northumberland or of Jane. A body of 150 men were then marched to the gates of the Tower, where the keys were demanded in the name of Queen Mary. Lady Jane’s father realized that the end had come; he rushed to his daughter’s chamber and tore down the canopy of state under which she sat. Her reign had lasted for just nine days.

The lords of the council then proceeded to the cross at Cheapside, where in due state they declared Mary to be the queen of England. The crowd of spectators cried out ‘God save the queen’, and Pembroke tossed his purse and embroidered cap into the throng. The bells of St Paul’s rang out, to be joined by all the other bells in the city. The lords then went in procession to the cathedral where, for the first time in almost seven years, the hymn of praise known as the Te Deum was sung by the choir. The apprentices gathered wood to light bonfires at the major crossroads. That evening the council wrote to Northumberland, asking him to lay down his arms.

The duke himself, now all but trapped in Cambridge, hurried to the market cross. He informed the crowds of angry spectators that he had followed the council’s orders in proclaiming Jane and proceeding against Mary; now that the council had changed its opinion, he would also change his. He threw up his cap and called out ‘God save Queen Mary’. He told a colleague that Mary was a merciful woman and would declare a general pardon. To which came the reply that ‘you can hope nothing from those that now rule’.

Arundel came to Cambridge with orders to arrest him. ‘I obey, my lord,’ Northumberland said, ‘yet show me mercy, knowing the case as it is.’

‘My lord, you should have sought for mercy sooner. I must do according to my commandment.’

At seven in the evening of 3 August Queen Mary entered her
capital in triumph accompanied by a retinue of 500 attendants; her horse was trapped with cloth of gold, and her gown of purple velvet was embroidered with gold. She wore a chain of gold, and jewels, about her neck and her headdress was similarly covered in precious stones. She was greeted by the civic dignitaries at Aldgate and then through cheering crowds rode in procession to the Tower of London. Here, the prisoners of the old regime were waiting to greet her, among them the duke of Norfolk and the conservative bishops. She raised them from their knees, and kissed each one upon the cheek. ‘You are my prisoners!’ she exclaimed before returning to them their liberty. The cannons sounded ‘like great thunder, so that it had been like to an earthquake’.

Less than three weeks later Northumberland was led to the scaffold at Tower Hill. He confessed to the crowds around him that he had ‘been an evil liver and have done wickedly all the days of my life’. Then, perhaps to the surprise of those who watched him, he denounced radical preachers for turning him away from the true religion. ‘I beseech you all,’ he declared, ‘to believe that I die in the Catholic faith.’ The day before he had heard Mass in the chapel of St Peter ad Vincula in the Tower. It was said that he had made his conversion in a desperate attempt to avert death or, perhaps, to save his family from further punishment. Yet his return to Catholicism may have been entirely genuine.

As the end came he recited a prayer and the psalm
De Profundis
. The executioner, according to custom, now begged his pardon; the man wore a white apron, like a butcher. ‘I have deserved a thousand deaths,’ Northumberland told him. He made the sign of the cross in the sawdust around him and laid his head upon the block. One stroke of the axe was enough. Some little children mopped up the blood that had fallen through the slits of the scaffold.

The imperial ambassador declared that Mary’s triumphant reclamation of the crown had been a miracle of God and a token of the divine will. The new queen herself saw her accession as part of a sacred dispensation. It was her destiny, and duty, to bring her country back to the old faith. On the secular level it could also be said that a popular rebellion had overthrown an established regime. She had, in addition, gained the throne largely as a result of the loyalty of the Catholic nobility; no overtly Protestant lord had supported her. As soon as she heard that she had been proclaimed queen in London, she ordered that the crucifix be once more set up in her chapel at Framlingham.

When Mary first rode into the capital, after her triumph, many households placed images of the Virgin and of the saints in their windows as a token of the change. News of her accession reached the congregation gathered in Exeter Cathedral to hear a sermon by the reformer Miles Coverdale; the report was whispered around the assembly and, one by one, the people stood up and walked out. Only a few of the ‘godly’ remained. All over the country the Mass was once more chanted in Latin. Without any statutes or proclamations, the images and altars of the old faith were quickly restored. The crucifixes were set up, and the statues of the Virgin and the saints were put in their familiar places. When a justice tried to
prosecute some priests in Kent for saying Mass, he himself was imprisoned. Six or seven Masses were, in any case, now being sung every day in the royal chapel at Whitehall. It had once again become the centrepiece of true faith.

On the matter of her brother’s funeral Mary was hesitant. She did not want to use the reformed burial service. ‘She could not’, she said, ‘have her brother committed to the ground like a dog.’ She was advised that it were best for a heretic king to have a heretic funeral, thus avoiding public controversy. So she compromised. Reluctantly she agreed that he could be buried according to the rite that he had favoured during his reign, but she tried to safeguard his soul and her principles by having a Latin Mass for the dead sung the night before his funeral and a solemn requiem a few days later.

On 18 August 1553 Mary issued a Proclamation Concerning Religion in which she forbade the use of opprobrious terms such as ‘papist’; she also commanded that no one ‘shall henceforth under pretext of sermons or lessons either in Church, publicly or privately, interpret the Scriptures, or teach anything pertaining to religion, except it be in the Schools of the university’. She had, in other words, banned all radical or reformed preachers. She had asserted that she had no thought of religious compulsion, but with the ominous proviso ‘until such time as further order by common consent may be taken’.