Heretic Queen (3 page)

His personal descent into his private hell had begun on the very day Mary Tudor had grabbed back her throne from the Duke of Northumberland's puppet, Queen Jane.
9
Rogers was unceremoniously attacked as a seditious preacher by Mary's religious examiners and stripped of his livelihood.
10
Undaunted, he remained steadfast to his beliefs. Yet the moment the papal legate had been welcomed back to London a few weeks earlier, John Rogers had known that all his years of devotion, sacrifice, and religious study were at an end.

Of course, he knew that he had broken no laws and that the queen had acted prematurely against him. In Mary's eyes, in July 1553, she was merely consolidating her hold on her troubled country. She had not yet been able to convene Parliament, much less change the laws reconciling England to Roman Catholicism. So while the hapless vicar had committed no offense other than to preach the official religion of the realm, an Anglicized version of Lutheranism, Queen Mary could not stomach sanctioning such preaching, albeit temporarily, during her rule.

As Mary swept to power in July 1553 on a wave of popularity thanks to the wrongs she had been made to endure, foremost in her mind was her solemn quest, bordering on delusion, that as the granddaughter of Queen Isabella of Spain, who had driven the Jews and Moors out of the Iberian Peninsula, she would drive the Protestant specter from England. She had been deeply scarred by the battle of wills with her father and Thomas Cromwell, who had forced her to sign the Oath of Succession renouncing her obedience to Rome in 1535. Within the year, she had applied to the pope for absolution for what she felt had been her most heinous sin.
11
The establishment of the Church of England had been, to her mind, solely for the purpose of setting aside the marriage of her mother to her father. Now that she was England's queen, Mary was determined that it would be
her
vision for England's collective soul and conscience that would prevail.

*   *   *

Knowing this to
be true, seventeen months later, in December 1554, there was little doubt in John Rogers's mind that he would become a martyr to his religious beliefs. Despite claims that would be made by his inquisitors to the contrary, Rogers's real crime was not in preaching the
new
religion so much as in saving William Tyndale's religious work from destruction by Roman Catholic interests in Antwerp. His crime was translating the Bible into English as the “Thomas Matthews” edition of the holy book, preserving much of Tyndale's exceptional language.
12
Miles Coverdale, who had also been at the English factory in Antwerp when Tyndale was betrayed and seized, had taken the “Thomas Matthews” edition and revised it several times thereafter, until it had become the Great Bible that had been put into every church in the country. Rogers would never know that his masterpiece would become the foundation of the 1611 version of the King James Bible that would endure for over three and a half centuries.

Within a month of that December 2 morn in 1554, the Holy Roman Emperor's envoy wrote home that “another bill has been brought forward, a measure for the punishment of heretics that had already been through Parliament under Henry IV and Richard II,” as a means of expediting the return to Catholicism and punishment of its black sheep.
13
The reinstatement of laws dating from the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries smacked of a messianic desperation to brand heretics by the tried and tested definitions of yore, long before Martin Luther had pinned his ninety-five theses to the door of Wittenberg's church a hundred or so years later.

There were other controversial bills brought before Parliament at that same session as well. The most notorious of these provided for Philip's sovereignty during Mary's confinement for childbirth. Another provided for who would have the right to act on Philip's behalf should the queen be incommoded while he was absent from the kingdom. Given the dangers of childbirth, a bill was also tabled to agree that Philip could remain king even in the event of Queen Mary's death. It was hoped the measure would be regarded as a precaution to ensure the succession. The Holy Roman Emperor's envoy, Simon Renard, believed that the bill regarding the heretics would be passed but doubted that the upper house of Parliament would accept Philip as king in his own right, any more than it would vote in favor of the bill of “bastardy” against Elizabeth Tudor in the current session.

*   *   *

Nevertheless, with the
legalities of the return to Rome finally resolved in the queen's mind, and the ancient laws regarding heresy back on the statute books, an intelligent and pious man like John Rogers knew that his end was near if he did not conform. His wife, Adriana, had long been “more richly endowed with virtue and soberness of life than with worldly treasures,” as were their eleven children. He had been incarcerated for over a year without trial, deprived of his stipend illegally, and his family was literally starving. It was for them that he, along with other political prisoners, wrote to the queen, to protest the illegality of their imprisonment and to demand their release or their right to trial.
14

Yet release had never been an option. On January 22, 1555, the queen's elder statesman, the overwhelming bishop of Winchester and chancellor, Stephen Gardiner, ordered the trials for heresy to begin in the presence of the Privy Council.
15
Rogers was brought before the royal commission to face his inquisitors. Chief among them was Edmund Bonner, bishop of London, who would be remembered by history as “bloody Bonner”—the man who ordered the burnings of 232 “heretics” of the total of 282 burned at the stake during Queen Mary's reign.

Though weakened by a long term of imprisonment without trial, miserable living conditions, and lack of proper sanitation and hygiene, Rogers stood tall before the council declaring, “That which I have preached I will seal with my blood!” The Lord Chancellor then asked, “Wilt thou return to the Catholic Church and unite and knit thyself with us, as all the Parliament House has done?” Rogers replied, “I have never did nor will dissent from the Catholic Church.” It was an irate Lord Chancellor who fired the next salvo at Rogers, “But I speak of receiving the Pope to be Supreme Head.” Rogers's response was eloquent: “I know of no other head of the Catholic Church but Christ. Neither will I acknowledge the Bishop of Rome to have any more authority than any other Bishop has either by the word of God or the doctrine of the Church.”
16

Despite the constant harangue from his inquisitors, Rogers remained steadfast and declined to recant. It was too late to turn the clock back; too late to reinsert a supreme head of the church between a bishop and Christ. At the end of his interrogation, Rogers even prayed for the pope and his cardinals, as well as the souls living in purgatory, begging the Lord to pardon them for their sins. Of course, a guilty verdict of the court had been a foregone conclusion.

So John Rogers was brought on Monday, February 4, 1555, to his place of execution, the market at Smithfield in London. The disbelieving crowds gathered around, some to enjoy the ghoulish spectacle, others wondering what evil omen the execution of a vicar portended, still others horrified and knowing that there would be worse to come. As John Rogers passed through the onlookers, a groundswell of cheers rose from the people, reaching a crescendo when he walked calmly onto his pyre and was tied to its stake by his ankles and chest.

As the fagots of wood were set alight around his feet, Rogers seemed renewed, almost free. He murmured his prayers until the fire had taken hold of his legs and shoulders. Then, as if to mock his tormentors, Rogers committed the ultimate insult. He washed his hands in the flames as if they had been cold water and he was purifying his soul, then lifted his blazing hands up to heaven. Rogers had vanquished his captors with this final act of simple defiance. He yielded up his spirit into the hands of his Heavenly Father and showed the way for the 281 Protestant martyrs to follow him in the remaining three years of “bloody” Mary's reign.

*   *   *

The next day,
the panicked Holy Roman envoy, Simon Renard, wrote to Philip, “I do not think it well that your Majesty should allow further executions to take place unless the reasons are so overwhelmingly strong and the offences committed have been so scandalous as to render this course justifiable in the eyes of the people … The watchword should be
secure, caute et lente festinare
.”
17

Security, caution, and hasten slowly.

 

PART I

A Wounded and Divided Land, 1558–1566

They would secretly seek to inflame

our realm with firebrands.

—
E
LIZABETH
I
TO THE
S
PANISH AMBASSADOR DE
S
PES

 

ONE

The New Deborah

A princess who can act any part she pleases.

—Lord Burghley, of Elizabeth

The reign of Mary I ended on November 17, 1558, and that of Lady Elizabeth began. No longer disinherited and demoted, Elizabeth had miraculously survived to become queen. By the time of Elizabeth's coronation in January 1559, life in Mary's reign was decidedly another country.

As the procession for Elizabeth's coronation began, snowflakes danced on the air, bowing and sweeping as if upon a stage in deference to the earsplitting cheers from their adoring audience. The cries of joy were not for the flakes or their thin white blanket that spread itself like a gossamer veil over the city. All those who huddled together by the quayside rejoiced for the tall, slender woman with red-gold hair.

Queen Elizabeth had suddenly appeared on the privy stairs of Whitehall Palace in a flurry of activity, cocooned by her entire court of barons, knights, and ladies. As she stepped forward, she nodded slowly, perhaps knowingly, at her people in the distance. To all eyes, the new queen made her way down to the awaiting barges with a regal grace not seen since the times of her father, King Harry. To all fluttering hearts, the rekindled joy was palpable.

It was two o'clock in the afternoon, and the flood tide had turned. The River Thames waited for no one, not even kings or queens. Still, Elizabeth paused before taking the boatman's outstretched hand. She raised her chin skyward, allowing the snowflakes to fall upon her upturned face, and smiled. Did she silently rehearse the prayer she would utter aloud two days later, “O Lord, Almighty and Everlasting God, I give Thee most hearty thanks that Thou has been so merciful unto me as to spare me to behold this joyful day”?

Perhaps not. Still, she was evidently savoring the moment, as she would each of the unfettered moments in the days to come. The years since her mother's execution had been fraught with hardship, disillusionment, and downright abuse from those closest to her. In the twelve years since Henry VIII's death, Elizabeth had danced on many a high wire, with countless onlookers praying she would fall and break that handsome neck of hers. Though she had come close on two occasions, Elizabeth had survived.

Perhaps that was in part due to her father's last queen, Catherine Parr, who had made certain that Elizabeth received a first-rate education. This, along with the friendship of key individuals, the instincts of a survivor, and the genetic makeup of the daughter of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII, had ensured that she would reach this day. Yet Elizabeth, as a fervent follower of the new religion, took no credit for “God's work.”

On this day—Thursday, January 12, 1559—she would reenter the Tower of London precinct as England's queen. More than any other royal palace, the Tower held terrible memories for the last of the Tudors. Of course, it was there that her mother, Anne Boleyn, and her cousin Catherine Howard were beheaded for their “treason” against her father, the king. It was at the Tower, too, that only four years earlier she had been held prisoner by Mary, fearing for her very life. Yet it was the way of the kings of England that they would sojourn at the Tower for two nights before their coronations, and Elizabeth Tudor was not about to break with tradition.

As the galleys and barges glided eastward down the Thames, the queen's barge with its rich cochineal red Flemish tapestries could be clearly seen. Elizabeth herself glittered with jewels and was warmed by her rich furs. She sat cosseted at the rear of her long galley rowed by forty men. There was no doubt that she was the main reveler in the spectacle, sparkling at her own good fortune. A band of musicians swathed in the queen's crimson and black livery played their shawm, sackbut, and drums with “a great and pleasant melody playing most sweet and in a heavenly manner.”
1
She was England's angel in her gilded galley slicing crisply through the water, oars rising and falling to the rhythm of the drums and the awe of her people.

Meanwhile, the Lord Mayor and his aldermen followed closely behind in their highly decorated vessels. The court and the city fathers accompanying her fanned out across the Thames, like hundreds of peacocks in great array, aboard their silver galleys and brigantines, their colorful banners streaming, proclaiming their ancient mysteries, or crafts. The procession made a choreographed spectacle quite unlike any other along London's busy waterway, with hundreds of barges in the royal entourage rowing in unison toward a single and singular purpose.

Il Shifanoya, the Venetian observer in London, reported to the doge that it reminded him of Ascension Day at Venice, when the Signory goes to espouse the Sea.
2
There was no mistaking the queen's naval progress from the other ships plying their trade along the Thames. Wherries crowded in as near as they dared while their occupants waved, throwing their hats in the air, hailing Elizabeth, and wishing her “God speed!”