Tudors (History of England Vol 2) (40 page)

Yet all the treasure in the world would not allay the fears and suspicions of the citizens. It was rumoured that a great Spanish army would invade the country and that Spanish friars would take over the churches. It was feared that England would no longer be an independent country. One chronicler reported that ‘the English are so bad, and fear God so little that they handle the friars shamefully, and the poor men do not dare to leave their quarters . . . the crowd tried to tear the cloaks off the backs of Don Pedro and Don Antonio his nephew asking what they meant by wearing crosses and jeering at them’. Religion and xenophobia were a potent mixture.

The Spanish in turn treated the English with disdain. It will be profitable here to examine the general reputation of the nation, described by the French ambassador as ‘this nasty island’. The women were deemed to be beautiful, while the men were handsome and of ruddy complexion. The language was considered to be uncouth, but what could you expect from people living at the extremity of the world? They were, essentially, barbarians. Englishmen swore with a vehemence that shocked foreigners; even the
children swore great oaths. All the people drank too much with the favoured ‘double beer’, as strong as whisky, leaving them ‘stark staring mad like March Hares’. It may have been the beer that encouraged the belching, in which sport all the English participated; every meal ended with a belching contest. Dinner was eaten at any time between ten and twelve, with supper at six in the evening.

And what did these barbarians eat? The Spanish noblemen with Philip were astonished by the variety of the food. ‘These English have their houses made of sticks and dirt, but they fare commonly so well as the king.’ They feasted on great shins of beef, on mutton and veal, on lamb and pork; they ate brawn, bacon, fruit pies, fowls of every sort. This could not have been a universal diet, however, and the poorer sort would have eaten the ‘white meats’ of the dairy, such as butter and cheese, as well as beans, peas, onions and garlic.

The Spanish courtiers described their hosts as ‘white, pink and quarrelsome’. It was a violent world, where every man went armed. The English were quick to take offence. They were fit for nothing except eating and drinking; their dances were all ‘strutting or trotting about’; their women were ‘of evil conversation’; they were all thieves. The courtiers moved among the local people ‘as if they were animals, trying not to notice them’. Fights and brawls erupted in the streets, and even broke out in the halls of the palace at Whitehall. In one battle 500 Englishmen were involved; it ended with six dead and three dozen badly wounded. More innocent misunderstandings also took place. When the duchess of Alva visited the queen neither lady would allow the other to take a lower seat; the elaborate courtesies ended with both of them sitting on the floor.

In the autumn of the year it seemed possible, even likely, that the fruit of the royal marriage would soon be ripe. The queen believed that she had conceived, and in this belief she was supported by her doctors. If that were indeed the case then her immediate problems, among them the popular reception of her husband, would be resolved. The Te Deum was sung in the churches of the realm, where prayers were also offered for the safe birth of an heir to the throne. Some of course were horrified
at the prospect of a Catholic succession. A sheet of writing was nailed to the gate of the palace at Whitehall. ‘Will you be such fools, oh noble Englishmen, as to believe that our queen is pregnant? And of what should she be, but of a monkey or a dog?’ The nation waited.

The failure of Wyatt’s rebellion, and the subsequent arrival of Philip, lent confidence to the queen. The pace of religious reform, or perhaps of religious reversal, now intensified. The Mass was celebrated throughout the kingdom. On Palm Sunday of 1554 palms were once more held aloft in procession, and the ceremony of ‘creeping to the cross’ was renewed on Good Friday; the old rite of resurrection was performed on Easter Sunday. The quotations from Scripture, which had taken the place of images and pictures, were wiped away or whitewashed. At St Paul’s Cathedral the choir went up to the steeple to sing the anthems, reviving a custom that had long been in disuse. Edmund Bonner, bishop of London, decreed that every church in the city must have among other instruments of devotion ‘a cross for procession with candlesticks, a cross for the dead, an incenser, a ship or vessel for frankincense, a little sanctus bell . . .’ There must be a high altar, with all its cloths and hangings. He asked if, at the time the host was raised, any of the congregation hung their heads or hid behind the pillars or even left the church. Church music was in due course restored.

Certain individuals suffered from these changes. Married priests were deprived of their livings. The vicar of Whenby, in Yorkshire, proceeded in front of his congregation wearing a surplice and carrying a lighted candle. ‘Masters,’ he began, ‘I have been seduced
and deceived, thinking that I might lawfully marry . . .’ He then proceeded to beg pardon. Of the twenty-two bishops in the Edwardian regime, only seven retained their sees. The old reformers – Cranmer, Ridley and Latimer – were sent to Oxford where they were to be interrogated by the bishops and clergy of the convocation. They were taken from the Tower, where they had been detained, to the Bocardo; this was Oxford’s prison, in a watchtower by the north gate of the town. The queen had a particular dislike for Archbishop Cranmer, who had been instrumental in the degradation of her mother. Bonner used to call him in derision ‘Mr Canterbury’.

They were given what might be called a show trial before a committee of the convocation. On being questioned about transubstantiation Cranmer was often hissed down, so that he could not be heard at all; he was described as ‘unlearned’, ‘unskilful’ and ‘impudent’.

Ridley was called on the following day for his interrogation. ‘You see the obstinate, vainglorious, crafty and inconstant mind of this man,’ his inquisitor concluded, ‘but you see also the force of truth cannot be shaken. Therefore cry out with me, truth has the victory!’ The clergy responded as if with one voice. Throughout his appearance ‘there was great disorder, perpetual shoutings, tauntings and reproaches’ so that the school of divines resembled a beargarden.

When Latimer came in, old and frail, he was permitted to sit; a pair of spectacles was hanging by a string at his breast, and he carried a staff. He was finally judged to be a heretic and accepted his fate as a means of glorifying God. ‘If you go to heaven with this faith,’ one of his interrogators told him, ‘then I will never come thither.’

Some 800 reformers fled to the Protestant centres of Europe, among them many clerics and scholars from the universities. The dowager duchess of Suffolk departed with many servants, among them her laundress and her fool. Eight English communities were established, in cities such as Frankfurt and Zurich, from where a stream of pamphlets was issued in general condemnation of Mary and the Marian settlement. The exiles were hoping, naturally enough, for the assassination of the idolatress. She was the
queen of all evil. In the meantime they thought of themselves as an embattled minority, a little flock of the faithful under the perpetual shadow of persecution. This image had a long life and helped to shape the discourse of the stricter sort of Calvinism. The anonymous author of
Humble Supplication unto God
blamed England’s ‘unthankfulness and wicked living’ for the return of popery. The religious refugees left a more enduring legacy with their Geneva Bible, the text for which Shakespeare had an abiding affection. A bishop in the more accommodating reign of Elizabeth remembered with fondness his years of exile. ‘Oh Zurich, Zurich, I think more of Zurich in England than ever I thought of England when I was in Zurich.’

A cleric of quite another stamp was coming to England in the winter of 1554. Reginald Pole, cardinal and papal legate, was returning home after an exile of twenty-two years. He came back eagerly, with the pious intention of bringing his country once more into the fold of Rome. England was still under papal interdict, perhaps consigning all its inhabitants to the peril of damnation. It was he whose family had been executed on the orders of Henry VIII; his mother, Margaret Pole, had been beheaded in a botched and painful death. He considered himself to be the son of a martyr. He was a solemn and pious man, grave and earnest.

On a day in late November his barge, with a great silver cross upon its bow, passed under London Bridge on its way to Whitehall. On his arrival at the palace Philip embraced him, while the queen waited at the head of the grand staircase. When Cardinal Pole came up to her she threw herself upon his breast. ‘Your coming’, she said, ‘causes me as much joy as the possession of my kingdom.’ He replied in Latin with the words that Gabriel had uttered to the Virgin. ‘
Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus
’ – ‘Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you, blessed are you among women.’ At this point the queen felt her baby leap in her womb. It was a moment of benediction.

Four days later the Lords and Commons assembled in the Great Chamber at Whitehall where the cardinal, at the right hand of the queen, addressed them. It was noted that the queen tried to make her supposed pregnancy very clear. Pole told parliament that he had come to return the keys to the kingdom of heaven, on
condition that all acts directed against the papacy were repealed. ‘I come to reconcile,’ he said, ‘not to condemn. I come not to compel but to call again.’ Some of the members were observed to weep. When the Lords and Commons met at Westminster on the following day they all agreed – with only two dissentient voices – to make their submission. The schism of two reigns was thereby ended.

On 30 November, St Andrew’s Day, the cardinal sat on a raised platform at the upper end of Westminster Hall. As he rose to his feet Mary and Philip fell to their knees, as did the whole of the assembly. With the authority of Jesus Christ and the most holy lord Pope Julius III, he then proceeded to absolve ‘this whole realm and the dominions thereof from all heresy and schism, and from all and every judgement, censure and pain for that cause incurred; and we do restore you again into the unity of our Mother the Holy Church, in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost’.

The queen could be heard to sob; the most solemn and sacred intention of her life had been fulfilled. Many in the hall called out ‘amen, amen’ before also breaking into tears. Some members threw themselves weeping into one another’s arms. Slowly they processed into the chapel where the choir sang the Te Deum. When the news reached Rome the cannon of Castel Sant’Angelo were fired. In a portrait of the queen, painted in this year, she is wearing a large Tau cross upon a choker of pearls around her neck; from her waist hangs an enamel reliquary adorned with the emblems of the four evangelists. She loved jewellery, but it was jewellery with a message.

Pole’s central purpose was to restore order and direction to a battered faith. He tried to refurbish the finances of the Church; he appointed twenty bishops; he established seminaries where young priests could be trained. He had long been a resident in Rome and was therefore eager to embrace papal supremacy; but the Lords and Commons had gone beyond that point. It was not practical. He had also wanted to take back the monastic lands that had been expropriated in Henry’s reign, but there were too many vested interests to make that course feasible. What lord or gentleman would surrender what they had owned for thirty years? The imperial
ambassador remarked that in any case ‘the Catholics hold more church property than the heretics’.

After the solemn ceremony of absolution, parliament then proceeded to deal with the matter of church lands. A bill declared such land had always been subject to statute law, and that no other authority could meddle with the matter. A supplication was addressed to the pope, requesting that church property should be allowed to remain in lay hands. In the same parliament Stephen Gardiner fought successfully to pass his Revival of the Heresy Acts; the medieval statute
de heretico comburendo
, on the burning of heretics, was thereby restored.

Other elements of Catholic practice also returned to life. The Carthusian monks were sent to Sheen and the Benedictines were returned to Westminster; the Dominicans were reunited at St Bartholomew’s in Smithfield and the Franciscans at Greenwich. The Bridgettine nuns, many of whom had crossed the Channel in Henry’s time, flocked back to Syon.

Yet the revived Catholicism of Mary’s reign did not restore the old faith in its entirety. The sacrifice of the Mass was for the queen the single most important element of the faith to which all else was subject. The only shrine to be restored was that of Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey, and in her reign Mary never went on pilgrimage. St Thomas of Canterbury and Our Lady of Walsingham remained unhonoured. Some of the familiar customs were also quietly ignored. There was scant interest in saints or in the Virgin. Little was said of purgatory. Mary remained the supreme head of the Church in England, and only lip service was paid to the doctrine of papal supremacy. It was pointed out at the time that almost half of the population was under the age of twenty and thus had never experienced papal domination. It simply could not be imposed once more.