Heretic Queen (2 page)

—S
USAN
R
ONALD

Oxford, April 2011

 

PROLOGUE

The Sacrificial Priest

The London of Mary Tudor's reign—like most times past—was truly another country. Rich woodlands and coppice woods of lime, ash, oak, elm, holly, beech, hornbeam, and maple carpeted the capital's county of Middlesex, stretching northward nearly twenty miles to the Essex and Hertfordshire borders. Some of these highly prized woods had belonged to the Oxford and Cambridge colleges ever since the universities had been founded hundreds of years earlier. Others, equally well maintained, had been the property of Westminster Abbey or St. Paul's Cathedral or other church establishments. That is, until the time of King Henry VIII. With the dissolution of England's monasteries under Henry beginning in 1536, all the valuable woodland that had once belonged to the Catholic Church reverted to the crown. Since then, much of England's managed woodland had been passed on to Henry's nobles, in thanks for their help in plundering and destroying papal monetary authority in England.

Yet it was the yeoman tenants and peasants of the woods who “farmed” these as renewable sources of fuel and building timber. At the autumn coppice harvest, the wood gatherers would cut the poles, or new shoots, trim and divide these into one- or two-inch bundles of a hundred evenly sorted sticks called fagots, tie these together, and bring them to the woodmongers for sale. Though fagots were mainly used for kindling in small kilns, they were an essential part of the wood trade: literally fueling homes, bakeries, forges, and brewhouses. That is, until February 4, 1555.

*   *   *

Woodland, coppice, heresy,
and treason were linked for the first time in Queen Mary's reign on February 3, 1555, when an eight-foot solid oak stake around ten inches in diameter was driven into the ground at Smithfield Market just outside the city walls. Long known as the place of execution for traitors, Smithfield offered particular benefits to Queen Mary's advisers, as it was close enough to the Thames to haul such timber from the Essex borders at an advantageous price. Yet whether the oak stake or the fagot bundles originated from royal forests or former church lands remains a mystery. Whether the ten bundles of fagots needed to carry out the dastardly deed were all brought to Smithfield on the same “shout,” or riverboat, we shall never know.
*
Whether the oak stake or the fagots had been stored at the wharves at Queenhithe or Timberhithe or at the ones just below London Bridge near Wood Street was never recorded.
1

What mattered for the people was that the “whispering times” had returned. No one dared speak out openly against the imposition of the English prayer book in the previous reign, or the seizure of local chantries. The “old blindness” of Catholicism among the family elders had been restored with Mary's reign, and the younger generations would soon discover, just as their elders had done, that it was dangerous to meddle in God's word, or the word of their anointed monarch.
2
For those who had any doubts that the “whispering times” were back, the local criers shouting out that an execution for heresy would take place the following day at Smithfield convinced them. The victim's name shocked everyone and made them wonder if anyone could be truly safe again.

Even the choice of Smithfield Market as a place of execution was an inspired and elegant one. The fact that Wat Tyler, leader of the Peasants' Revolt in 1381, had met the boy king Richard II at Smithfield and that John Forest, prior of the Observant Convent at Greenwich, was caged like a wild animal and roasted alive there in 1538 by Henry VIII resonated in the people's minds. To them, these were fables from another world, another country, that was both “rich and strange.”
3
These historic events held a symbolism that Queen Mary's councillors sought to drive home, striking terror into the hearts of her people. It would be this fear that would transform the once beloved queen's fledgling reign, for ill and forever.

*   *   *

It took three men
to dig the hole in the frozen February ground that day, and three more to raise the oak stake while the others secured it. Four armed guards were ordered to stand watch around the stake overnight—in case some unrest should be fomented. The ten bundles of one hundred sticks of kindling each would be placed around the stake on the morning of the execution. These were held under lock and key overnight in a rick-cart nearby.

What was most striking to average Londoners was the name of the victim. They were simply incredulous. Surely it could not be true that such a holy man as he would meet his death by burning at the stake? Not since the time of Mary's father had there been such widespread alarm. It was the kind of fear that confirmed to them that, if a man or woman spoke contrary to the new articles of religion, even if they were entirely ignorant of the charge against them, they would be condemned to death and suffer their due pains as appointed by law.
4
The “whispering times” had indeed returned.

*   *   *

Seemingly, no one attempted
to persuade Queen Mary—England's first anointed queen regnant—that this execution was anything except righteous in the eyes of the Lord. Even Mary's husband, Philip II of Spain, had believed that executions for heresy in England could only bring misfortune upon his wife's rule, but Mary and her closest advisers, who included the papal legate, knew best. After all, it was the Privy Council, headed by Mary's bully-boy Stephen Gardiner, Lord Chancellor and bishop of Winchester, that had interrogated the unfortunate sinner. It was Gardiner and the archbishop of Canterbury who were closeted with the queen to determine the just punishment for his crimes. It was the bishop of London who raised his hand high to become their instrument of torture for future heresies in the city. The more reasoned council voices grew mute and obeyed their dread queen's wishes.

Mary, by now visibly swollen “with child” in the first of her phantom pregnancies, had already become mistrustful of her large council. Though fervently believing that the execution of heretics was the right path to follow, she feared the displeasure of her people. Still, above all else, the law must be seen by the people to be served. At the outset of her reign in 1553, Mary had plainly instructed her council:

that good preaching may overcome the evil preaching in time past, and that no evil books be printed, bought or sold without punishment. I think … punishment of heretics ought to be done without rashness.
5

Nonetheless, London was a particular worry to the queen. It was London that held the mood of the country and the will of the people. It was essential that those living in the capital feel that Mary was acting justly—not only according to the laws of religion but also according to the laws of the land. “Especially in London I would wish none [heretics] to be burnt without some of the council's [
sic
] presence,” Mary ordered, “and everywhere good sermons at the same [executions] … So I account myself bound to show such example that it may be evident to all this realm how I discharge my conscience.”
6

With this message foremost in her mind, councillors were selected to report back from Smithfield on the public reaction—whether the outcry would be favorable to the heretic or to her. The most trusted comptroller of the queen's household, Sir Robert Rochester, along with Sir Richard Southwell, both of whom were also sheriffs, fit the bill.

*   *   *

So, on the
wintry morning of February 4, 1555, under heavily laden clouds, the rick-cart dragging the ten bundles of fagots was taken from the nearby warehouse by two unnamed men and wheeled to the site of execution. They were surrounded by the queen's men on horseback to guard against the threat a spontaneous riot. The pyre was built on a bed of straw and dried twigs, to help it catch fire more readily, with the fagots stacked upright around the oak stake at a ninety-degree angle. Men on horseback wearing the queen's livery policed the crowd, while the queen's guard, armed with pikes, lined the avenue through which the sinner would walk to the stake. When the condemned man appeared, the crowd's whispers rose in a groundswell of incredulity: So the rumors were true, they muttered to one another. See how thin this man of the cloth, this “sinner,” had become, others lamented. Surely he had been tortured … surely there must be some mistake?

None the less, there was no mistake. The unrepentant priest walked calmly in his long, soiled shirt to the stake, chanting the
Miserere.
Mary's bishop of London began his short sermon while the sinner was tied to the oak post. The queen's guard formed a tight circle around them to prevent any members of the public interfering with the execution. When the sermon was finished, the bishop nodded to the executioner to set the fagots alight. The queen's mounted men closed in to control the crowd. Rushing around the pyre, the poor executioner touched his torch to the straw, to ensure that when the flames reached the condemned man, they would consume him evenly. Then, as the fire spread, he poked at the burning straw with his pike, so that the fagots would catch fire quickly. It was the only act of mercy the executioner would be permitted to give. Yet when the flames licked at the sinner's feet, the condemned priest smiled. Minutes later, he was dead, burned at the stake for his belief in the Protestant faith.

*   *   *

The root cause
of the priest's execution could be traced back to the beginning of Mary's reign. In the seventeen months since Mary had become queen, she had had to wrest her throne away from the teenaged usurper Lady Jane Grey; then, within five months, in February 1554, shortly after Mary's Spanish marriage had been proclaimed, the queen was forced to subdue a southern rebellion led by Sir Thomas Wyatt and his Kentish followers. Both her half sister the Lady Elizabeth and the young usurper Lady Jane Grey were implicated as the Protestant heirs to Mary's throne. Still, Mary proved herself worthy of the Tudor name, winning the hearts and minds of Londoners with her stirring speech, described as a miracle of “good kingship.” As a result Wyatt failed to penetrate London beyond a tavern at Ludgate Bar.

The first casualty of the Wyatt Rebellion, as the insurgency later became known, was Lady Jane Grey. Blindfolded, the poor, innocent pawn tragically sought the block upon which to lay her head for the executioner to sever. She was only seventeen.

Lady Elizabeth, only three years older than her cousin Jane Grey, was no innocent and quite rightly feared the same end. When Gardiner questioned her during her virtual imprisonment at Whitehall, she held her nerve, claiming she knew nothing. Mary, naturally, didn't believe her. Elizabeth was ordered to the Tower, charged with treason for her alleged part in the rebellion. Hoping she could make Mary see reason, she wrote a long pleading letter to the queen. Yet despite all her efforts to avoid the infamous “one way” journey taken by so many others in the reigns of her ancestors, Elizabeth entered the Tower precincts by water the following day from Tower Wharf, amid the terrifying screams of the castle's exotic menagerie of beasts and the roar of its lions. In a streak of wickedness, Mary had insisted that Elizabeth be placed in the generous accommodation that their father had renovated for Anne Boleyn's coronation.

Though Mary was never called the “queen of tempests,” hers was a reign that would be recalled by many as a veritable storm of discontent and mayhem. Wyatt was beheaded on the morning of April 11, 1554. Hours later, his body had been quartered, its bowel and private parts burned. His head was parboiled and nailed to the top of the gibbet at St. James's. Within the week Wyatt's head had been spirited away by one of his loyal followers.
7

Three weeks later, on May 4, Sir Henry Bedingfield was appointed constable of the Tower. His first act was to raise one hundred troops, making Lady Elizabeth fear that she would play her part on the same block as Lady Jane Grey. Instead, on May 19, 1554, Elizabeth was removed to house arrest a safe distance from London, arriving some days later at the Palace of Woodstock in Oxfordshire. Bedingfield wrote to the queen that “men betwixt London and these parts be not good and whole in matters of religion … be[ing] fully fixed to stand to the late abolishing of the Bishop of Rome's authority.”
8
Equally, he was tormented by Elizabeth's evident popularity on their progress to Woodstock. People lined the streets in villages and towns, giving her flowers, herbs, and expensive spices and wishing her “God speed” and good health. It was not a good sign for Mary's fruitful reign.

Worse was yet to come.

*   *   *

Seven months later,
the endgame for the unrepentant vicar John Rogers had just begun. On December 2, 1554, the bells of St. Paul's Cathedral rejoiced for England's long-awaited spiritual peace. Queen Mary—the first anointed Tudor queen of England, France, and Ireland—was presiding over the reconciliation of the Church of England to Rome. Already Mary could have been forgiven for thinking that she had been a mere “queen of tempests” and not the queen of a wealthy, green, heavily forested and pleasant land.

It was on this especially wintry December day that John Rogers also listened to the bells of St. Paul's peal in celebration of England's spiritual return to Rome. He was at home, as he had been for the past five months, under house arrest. Rogers had become the vicar of St. Sepulchre Church in London in May 1550, only four and a half years earlier, during the reign of Mary's little brother, Edward VI. The following August, Rogers received the prebend (stipend) of St. Pancras in St. Paul's Cathedral. He could be forgiven if he reflected that in the reigns of Edward VI and his sister Mary I, his much-admired career some four years distant was now an unrecognizable foreign world.