Authors: Linda Porter
Mary Tudor (23 page)
The queen defended herself with courage and dignity at her trial, and her brother with considerable energy and defiance at his. There was never the slightest doubt about the verdict. Tudor state trials did not allow for sudden and miraculous acquittals. Anne was spared the flames, the prescribed means of death for an adulterous queen, and faced her execution with resignation. On 16 May, Cranmer heard her confession; she seems to have asked him to watch over the education and upbringing of her daughter and to have then assumed, wrongly, as it happened, that her death would follow the next day. It was not until 19 May that she went to the scaffold. Before her death, she addressed the crowd, as was the custom. She was dutifully loyal to the king, but she refused to confess any wrongdoing: ‘According to the law and by the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak of that whereof I am accused and condemned to die, but I pray God save the king and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler and more merciful prince was there never and to me he was ever a good, a gentle, and sovereign lord.’
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Was this said just to ensure better treatment for Elizabeth, or did she go to her grave remembering only the happier moments that had characterised her love affair and marriage with Henry VIII? Then she prayed. She was still praying when the Calais swordsman took off her head.
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Was this said just to ensure better treatment for Elizabeth, or did she go to her grave remembering only the happier moments that had characterised her love affair and marriage with Henry VIII? Then she prayed. She was still praying when the Calais swordsman took off her head.
Among the spectators that spring day in 1536 was Thomas Cromwell, the man who had destroyed her in the space of less than three weeks. The day after her death, HenryVIII was betrothed to Jane Seymour, who had been tactfully lodged at Sir Nicholas Carew’s house during Anne’s trial. It was a short engagement. Jane and Henry were married on 30 May and Anne Boleyn’s name was not spoken again at court for more than 20 years.
Henry’s unquestioning acceptance of the guilt of the woman he had lived with for nine years is remarkable.Theirs had been a great love and he abandoned it on the basis of evidence that even Anne’s enemies found incredible. He must have wanted to believe it. According to Cromwell, he had ‘been authorised and commissioned by the king to prosecute and bring to an end the mistress’s trial, to do which he had taken considerable trouble’.
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But who was managing whom? It all depends when Cromwell’s commission was received. And even supposing that it was after revelations that shocked the king, was he putting the responsibility for solving the problem on his chief adviser out of distress or guile? Emotionally he was a strangely fragile man with an infinite capacity to feel sorry for himself. He also knew how to get others to do his dirty work and he expected complete, unquestioning loyalty. Opposition made him ruthless, but Anne’s opponents, and Mary above all, did not learn from the lessons of her fall.
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But who was managing whom? It all depends when Cromwell’s commission was received. And even supposing that it was after revelations that shocked the king, was he putting the responsibility for solving the problem on his chief adviser out of distress or guile? Emotionally he was a strangely fragile man with an infinite capacity to feel sorry for himself. He also knew how to get others to do his dirty work and he expected complete, unquestioning loyalty. Opposition made him ruthless, but Anne’s opponents, and Mary above all, did not learn from the lessons of her fall.
Mary was at Hunsdon in Essex, with Elizabeth, when Anne was executed. Her immediate reaction to the news is not known but her supporters believed they had triumphed.The princess herself undoubtedly expected to be restored to her father’s favour imminently. Her steadfastness would be rewarded now the concubine was dead. She waited for a week, perhaps expecting to receive some word from London. Then, on 26 May, she addressed herself to Cromwell, asking him to be a channel for her to the king. She said she would have asked him before, but ‘I perceived that nobody durst speak for me as long as that woman lived, which is now gone: whom I pray our Lord, of his great mercy, to forgive.’
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Little did she know that the most terrible phase of her own ordeal was just beginning.
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Little did she know that the most terrible phase of her own ordeal was just beginning.
The arc of Mary’s summer of hell, from unrealistic hopes, through fear and confusion to abject humiliation, can be traced in her letters. Many of these, in the collection of the 17th-century antiquarian Robert Cotton, were badly damaged by fire in 1731. The British Library still holds their remains, some of them little more than charred fragments. Fortunately, Mary’s correspondence was printed before the fire by another antiquarian,Thomas Hearne, in 1716.
The letters show a young woman who, through a mixture of pride and naivety, completely misjudged her situation. This was not entirely her fault; her friends, rejoicing at Anne Boleyn’s removal, did not realise they had been used, either. But used they were. Cromwell never intended that the old, conservative, Aragonese faction (so called because its principals were supporters of Queen Katherine) should triumph. Now that they had served their purpose, he intended to remove the conservatives. And it was easy to do this, by depicting them as disloyal subjects who were plotting to overturn religious change and restore Mary, the king’s illegitimate and disobedient daughter, to the succession.
Chapuys, who always regarded working with Cromwell to overthrow Anne Boleyn as something of an unholy alliance, remained unconvinced. ‘I must say however’, he wrote to CharlesV, ‘that as yet the king has shown no intention of bringing about the said re-instatement but has on the contrary obstinately refused to contemplate it’.
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Nor did he trust Cromwell’s assertion that in the next meeting of Parliament, Henry VIII would have Mary declared heiress to the crown, especially when, in almost the same breath, Cromwell earnestly requested him not to make any reference to the princess when he next had an audience with the king. It seemed to the ambassador that nothing about Mary’s underlying dilemma had really changed. Henry would surely not move ‘unless she previously swears to, and conforms with, the irritating statutes concerning the king’s second marriage as well as against papal authority; which act of acquiescence, in my opinion, it will be extremely difficult to obtain from the princess.’ He felt Mary ought to agree ‘so long as her conscience is not aggrieved, nor her rights and titles impaired through it’. But this was palpably impossible. The whole point of getting Mary to swear was so that she acknowledged that she had no rights or titles of any sort.
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Nor did he trust Cromwell’s assertion that in the next meeting of Parliament, Henry VIII would have Mary declared heiress to the crown, especially when, in almost the same breath, Cromwell earnestly requested him not to make any reference to the princess when he next had an audience with the king. It seemed to the ambassador that nothing about Mary’s underlying dilemma had really changed. Henry would surely not move ‘unless she previously swears to, and conforms with, the irritating statutes concerning the king’s second marriage as well as against papal authority; which act of acquiescence, in my opinion, it will be extremely difficult to obtain from the princess.’ He felt Mary ought to agree ‘so long as her conscience is not aggrieved, nor her rights and titles impaired through it’. But this was palpably impossible. The whole point of getting Mary to swear was so that she acknowledged that she had no rights or titles of any sort.
But Mary did not yet see this at all. Buoyed by obtaining permission to send a letter directly to her father, Mary wrote cheerfully to Cromwell at the end of May, thanking him for ‘the great pain and labour that you have taken for me and specially for obtaining of the king my father’s blessing and licence to write unto his grace; which are two of the highest comforts that ever came to me…I trust you shall find me as obedient to the king’s grace, as you can reasonably require of me’. She foresaw that, with Cromwell’s continued help, her father would withdraw his displeasure and allow her to come to see him, at last.
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Cromwell must have sighed when the letter reached him. She was hardly in a position to dictate terms on what might reasonably be required of her. The king wanted complete submission; the only terms being offered were his. So he summoned Chapuys and told him that he had prepared a minute that Mary could use as the basis of a letter to her father. It would be taken to her ‘by a lady in her utmost confidence’ (this was Lady Kingston, wife of the lieutenant of the Tower of London), who would, nevertheless, make it quite clear to her that if she refused to sign ‘she will be ill-treated and severely punished’.
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Chapuys also understood that Mary’s supporters would suffer unless she gave in and that her submission was not just the price of improvements in her own life, but in Anglo-Imperial relations as well. Most of all, he realised that he needed to save Mary from herself.
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Chapuys also understood that Mary’s supporters would suffer unless she gave in and that her submission was not just the price of improvements in her own life, but in Anglo-Imperial relations as well. Most of all, he realised that he needed to save Mary from herself.
She was still holding out in the second week of June, but becoming increasingly disturbed that she had received no reply to her letters to her father. On the first day of the month she had written to the king desiring his blessing and asking forgiveness for ‘all the offences that I have done to your grace, since I had first discretion to offend’. She was, she said, ‘as sorry as any living creature’. So far, Henry might have been pleased with the apology, but there was a qualification: ‘Next unto God, I do and will submit me in all things to your goodness and pleasure … humbly beseeching your highness to consider, that I am but a woman and your child, who hath committed her soul only to God and her body to be ordered in this world, as it shall stand with your pleasure.’ She also congratulated him on his marriage and asked to be allowed to see the new queen.
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It sounded good, but Henry wanted specific, unequivocal surrender to the laws that he, not God, had instituted. He made no reply because none was needed. He left it to Cromwell to ensure that Mary finally did what she was told.
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It sounded good, but Henry wanted specific, unequivocal surrender to the laws that he, not God, had instituted. He made no reply because none was needed. He left it to Cromwell to ensure that Mary finally did what she was told.
A week later, she again addressed her father, apparently under the delusion that ‘he has forgiven all her offences and withdrawn his displeasure long time conceived against her’. By this time, she had received the draft letter from Cromwell that she was to sign and return. But when she sent an amended copy back to the minister, on 10 June, she pleaded with him that she had given as much ground as her conscience would allow. She would not deny her mother’s marriage, nor her own title: ‘You shall perceive’, she wrote,
that I have followed your advice and counsel, and will do in all things concerning my duty to the king’s grace, (God and my conscience not offended:) for I take you for one of my chief friends, next unto his grace and the queen. Wherefore I desire you, for the passion which Christ suffered for you and me, and as my very trust is in you, that you will find such means through your great wisdom, that I be not moved to agree to any further entry in this matter than I have done. For I assure you by the faith I owe to God, I have done the uttermost that my conscience will suffer me: and I do neither desire nor intend to do less than I have done. But if I be put to any more (I am plain with you, as with my great friend) my said conscience will in no ways suffer me to consent thereunto … For I promise you (as I desire God to help me at my most need) I had rather leave the life of my body, than displease the king’s grace willingly. Sir, I beseech you for the love of God to take in good worth this rude letter. For I would not have troubled you so much at this time, but that the end of your letter cause me a little to fear that I shall have more business hereafter.
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It was desperate, eloquent stuff, and her fear was justified. She had sensed the truth - that, finally, she would be compelled to submit utterly. But she still could not bring herself to admit it.
Not even a deputation from the council, sent with uncompromising instructions, could sway her. She had ‘sundry times and of long continuance shown herself so obstinate towards the king’s majesty and so disobedient unto the laws’ that she could scarcely expect forgiveness. It was only her father’s inordinate goodness and patience which saved her, ‘such is his majesty’s gracious and divine nature, such is his clemency and pity, such is his merciful inclination and princely heart’.
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And what had this paragon of forbearance and saintliness done? He had dispatched a group of aristocratic thugs, headed by the ubiquitous Norfolk, to induce her to yield.When Mary got the best of the argument, they resorted to a vicious verbal assault.The cold brutality of the threats they made to a defenceless girl was stunning.The earl of Essex voiced their conviction that ‘since she was such an unnatural daughter as to disobey completely the king’s injunctions, he could hardly believe that she was the king’s own bastard daughter.Were she his or any other man’s daughter, he would beat her to death, or strike her head against the wall until he made it as soft as a boiled apple; in short, that she was a traitress and would be punished as such.’
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While this may be highly revealing of the overall view of women as disposable chattels of men in Tudor England, it was still remarkable language to use to someone born a princess. But, despite these threats of violence, the king’s bullies left empty-handed. Mary, frightened, alone and suffering from headaches and toothache, was almost at the end of her tether.Yet she would not sign.
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And what had this paragon of forbearance and saintliness done? He had dispatched a group of aristocratic thugs, headed by the ubiquitous Norfolk, to induce her to yield.When Mary got the best of the argument, they resorted to a vicious verbal assault.The cold brutality of the threats they made to a defenceless girl was stunning.The earl of Essex voiced their conviction that ‘since she was such an unnatural daughter as to disobey completely the king’s injunctions, he could hardly believe that she was the king’s own bastard daughter.Were she his or any other man’s daughter, he would beat her to death, or strike her head against the wall until he made it as soft as a boiled apple; in short, that she was a traitress and would be punished as such.’
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While this may be highly revealing of the overall view of women as disposable chattels of men in Tudor England, it was still remarkable language to use to someone born a princess. But, despite these threats of violence, the king’s bullies left empty-handed. Mary, frightened, alone and suffering from headaches and toothache, was almost at the end of her tether.Yet she would not sign.
Cromwell was exasperated.This could not be permitted to continue - her wilfulness was a danger to all around her.The king expected him to deliver, and the longer she held out, the more his ire would increase. Even Jane Seymour had totally failed when it came to gentle persuasion on Mary’s behalf. The king and his minister had not disposed of Anne Boleyn for Mary’s sake. She had no bargaining power and the tender state of her conscience was not relevant.
Chapuys was informed that he must persuade Mary to sign the articles that her father had drawn up. Her stubbornness was just making things worse, for her supporters and herself.The ambassador, his tongue firmly in his cheek, responded that he thought Mary would take more notice of Cromwell, who was like a second father to her. In fact, Cromwell was more like a wicked uncle. He sent Mary a letter that was both uncompromising and threatening. Her discomfort, he said, could be no greater than his. Having told the king that she would do his bidding, he was now ashamed and afraid of what he had done, ‘in so much that what the sequel thereof shall be, God knoweth.Thus with your folly you undo yourself, and all that have wished your good … to be plain with you, as God is my witness, like as I think you the most obstinate and obdurate woman, all things considered, that ever was.’ She deserved punishment for her ‘ingratitude and miserable unkindness’, and he would not speak on her behalf again until she had signed ‘a certain book of articles’ he was sending her.These were to be accompanied by a letter demonstrating ‘that you think in heart what you have subscribed with hand … if you will not with speed leave all your sinister counsels, which have brought you to the point of utter undoing, without remedy, and herein follow my advice, I take my leave of you forever’.
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