Authors: Linda Porter
Mary Tudor (31 page)
But Somerset did not satisfactorily explain what the ‘causes and considerations’ were and, in any case, Charles would probably not have been convinced. It was easier to remind the English of their frailty by building up Mary as a principled opponent of the regime. Her natural inclination in every crisis was to turn to her mother’s family for help. For years, they had been the only people she felt she could trust (even if her trust was misplaced) and they were powerful.The Habsburgs also had a strong sense of family obligation, though when it came to his relatives in England, Charles was much more impressive with words than deeds. In the spring of 1549, however, he could hardly have ignored Mary’s deeply felt plea for his support.
She was, she said,‘sincerely grieved’ to hear about the extent of his ill health, and especially touched that he had taken the trouble to write to her ‘entirely with your own hand, though ill’. One of her greatest comforts in the world was to hear news of the emperor,‘and particularly now in these miserable times, for, after God and considering the tender age of the king, my brother, your Majesty is our only refuge. We have never been in so great a necessity and I therefore entreat your Majesty, considering the changes that are taking place in the kingdom, to provide, as your affairs may best permit, that I may continue to live in the ancient faith, and in peace with my conscience.’ She feared that the new act of parliament would not allow her so to do, but she would hold firm: ‘in life and death I will not forsake the Catholic religion of the church our mother, as I more fully declared to your Majesty’s ambassador, when I asked him what help I could look for if they attempted to compel me with threats or violence’.
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Was Mary overreacting? Perhaps. Less open defiance might have been more prudent but Mary was not a pragmatic person. She had suppressed her conscience when she bowed to her father’s will 13 years earlier and she would not do so again.The parallels with 1536 were inescapable and must have brought back wretched memories. Once again, she was under attack, fighting for right, this time against the dark forces manipulating her brother. But this time, she was not a dependent, defenceless girl.With men and money of her own and the assurance of the emperor’s support, she clearly felt that she could survive. It would not be pleasant, but it could be endured and it would make her a stronger person.Though she did not say so she knew, from the reaction of ordinary people in East Anglia, that it would also reinforce her reputation as the upholder of the true faith. Legislation did not necessarily mirror popular sentiment and the majority of Englishmen had not yet made up their minds about the new liturgy. Mary was a powerful example to those who were undecided.
Her cousin assured her of his protection; he would not let her be bullied. He instructed his ambassador to seek a written assurance, ‘in definite, suitable and permanent form’, that Mary would be permitted to practise her faith as she had always done. Later, he would state still more flatly that he would not have allowed her to abandon the religion that her family had followed for centuries, even if she had been inclined to temporise. He did not say so explicitly, but the embarrassment would have been too great. A heretic Habsburg was not something Charles V could countenance. Nor had he entirely abandoned the idea of promoting a marriage for her with a bridegroom of his choice. Again, Dom Luis of Portugal was mentioned, though it soon became obvious that the emperor’s brother-in-law was interested only in Mary’s dowry. The possibility of marriage was used by Somerset as an opening for a visit to the emperor by William Paget. Before his departure, the canny statesman sought to downplay the significance of religious change in England, tellingVan der Delft:‘I will tell you something I would tell no other man alive, for it might suit me ill to do so. I think with time matters that cannot be touched now may yet be mended. If the emperor is lenient, it will help in this.’
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It was a vain hope, this expression of a moderate man who cared for his country more than any ideology or religion. But, experienced
politique
though he was, Paget achieved nothing and actually produced difficulty for Edward’s government. Charles V subsequently stated categorically that Paget had given him, while they were together in Brussels, an assurance that Mary would be left undisturbed to follow the form of religion she preferred. Paget could not, of course, acknowledge this, and given his natural caution, and his underlying concerns about the stability of English politics, it seems unlikely that he would have committed himself so clearly, even if it seemed to him an eminently sensible course to follow.
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politique
though he was, Paget achieved nothing and actually produced difficulty for Edward’s government. Charles V subsequently stated categorically that Paget had given him, while they were together in Brussels, an assurance that Mary would be left undisturbed to follow the form of religion she preferred. Paget could not, of course, acknowledge this, and given his natural caution, and his underlying concerns about the stability of English politics, it seems unlikely that he would have committed himself so clearly, even if it seemed to him an eminently sensible course to follow.
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The reality was that nobody could give any assurance for the future in the troubled summer of 1549. Social and religious discontent produced widespread rebellion, in the south-west and in Norfolk, which threatened the Protector’s survival. Somerset had compounded these difficulties by his highly autocratic and increasingly irrational personal style of government. The commons may have been in revolt about enclosures and the resulting economic hardship they faced, but the Protector’s colleagues had themselves reached breaking point.The ‘Good Duke’ was actually hot-tempered and high-handed, combining venality (which his colleagues must have known something about) with a dangerous propensity to appease the rebels in order to hold on to power. Maybe he did have some real sympathy for the populace, but it was his policies which had increased the hardship of their lives. For some time, he had abandoned all pretence of consultation with the council; discussion made him impatient and his determination to rule in an arbitrary fashion was causing increasing alarm. He was certainly warned, in frank terms, by Paget, who wanted to remain loyal but saw which way the wind was setting. His letter to the duke, written on 7 July 1549, paints a vivid picture of a rudderless, divided England at the halfway point of the 16th century:
… I see at hand the king’s destruction and your ruin. If you love me or value my service since the king’s father’s death, allow me to write what I think. Remember what you promised me in the gallery at Westminster before the late king died … planning with me for the place you now occupy - to follow my advice before any other. Had you done so, things would not have gone as they have.Society is maintained by religion and laws: you have neither. The old religion is forbidden and the new not generally imprinted.The law is almost nowhere used: the commons have become king …
He went on to urge Somerset to ride out himself and deal with the revolts through exemplary justice.
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The duke did not follow Paget’s advice. He let John Dudley, by this time earl of Warwick, deal with the Norfolk rebellion.Two thousand of the rebels were killed in fighting outside Norwich on 27 August, and though Warwick did not follow up his military success with many judicial executions, his ruthlessly efficient dispatch of so many local men provoked a hatred long remembered by the citizens of East Anglia.Their resentment explains why many of them supported Mary four years later. Opposition to the 1549 religious changes was also a powerful underlying factor that Somerset had chosen to ignore. It is interesting to note that Mary herself remained silent while the revolt raged around the lands she had recently acquired from the unpopular Howards, though the council claimed that her servants were implicated in both Cornwall and Norfolk, a charge which she indignantly denied.
Publicly, she also stayed aloof as the final drama of the Protector’s rule was played out. For nearly a week, in October 1549, England teetered on the brink of civil war, as Somerset tried, and failed, to survive a coup that had been long brewing. By late September,Warwick,Thomas Wriothesley, earl of Southampton, and Arundel (an unlikely triumvirate of two conservatives and a man who had long been Somerset’s friend) could stand no more.They persuaded other members of the privy council to support them and Somerset was finished. Removed as he was from his fellow-politicians, it was not until 5 October that the Protector fully accepted the gravity of his situation and commanded all subjects to Hampton Court, to protect the king against ‘a most dangerous conspiracy’. Warwick still had an army in the Home Counties and Somerset did not control the Tower of London. Alarmed for his own survival and afraid he would lose his property, he took the desperate gamble of removing Edward VI to Windsor, which was more defensible. There he was joined by Archbishop Cranmer and the thoroughly disillusioned Paget.
But his actions could easily be misrepresented as kidnapping of the monarch, and the king himself seems to have been genuinely scared when he was bundled away from Hampton Court. Cranmer’s ‘young Josiah’, divinely appointed to build a new Church in England, was just a frightened little boy in that autumn of 1549.The king’s discomfort was intensified by the fact that he caught a terrible cold on the journey to Windsor and felt very unwell. To the credit of all concerned, however, Edward VI and his country were spared an actual outbreak of violence. Somerset realised that his power was gone and Warwick and the others did not want an armed conflict.
The real casualties of these troubled times were friendship and trust, neither of which was to be easily found in mid-Tudor England. As Somerset lamented when he wrote to Warwick, so long his political ally: ‘My Lord, I cannot persuade myself that there is any ill conceived in your heart as of yourself against me; for that the same seemeth impossible that where there hath been from your youth and mine so great a friendship and amity between us, as never for my part to no man was greater, now so suddenly there should be hatred.’
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This poignant letter demonstrates the political naivety of the king’s uncle, whose long experience of the hatreds and deceptions of Henry VIII’s court had not taught him the lesson he now learned the hard way. Accepting defeat, he surrendered to the inevitable. On 14 October he was taken to the Tower and the king, who was desperate to get away from Windsor, returned to Hampton Court.
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This poignant letter demonstrates the political naivety of the king’s uncle, whose long experience of the hatreds and deceptions of Henry VIII’s court had not taught him the lesson he now learned the hard way. Accepting defeat, he surrendered to the inevitable. On 14 October he was taken to the Tower and the king, who was desperate to get away from Windsor, returned to Hampton Court.
Mary was not in London to offer comfort to her brother while his uncle’s regime collapsed, but she knew more than most people about what was happening and the manoeuvrings behind it. She told Van der Delft that she had been approached to give her support to Somerset’s overthrow, but had declined to get involved. While things remained uncertain, this was wise, and it may also have increased her stock with the council, who continued to view her as someone who must not be ignored. They wrote to Mary and Elizabeth on 9 October (though the letter was primarily intended for Mary, as the heiress to the throne): ‘Because the trouble between us and the Duke of Somerset may have been diversely reported to you, we should explain how the matter is now come to some extremity. We have long perceived his pride and ambition and have failed to stay him within reasonable limits.’They had been alarmed by the duke’s accusation that they wished to destroy the king and his behaviour at Hampton Court, where he had ‘said many untruths, especially that we should have him removed from office and your Grace made regent, with rule of the king’s person, adding that it would be dangerous to have you, the next in succession, in that place. This was a great treason and none of us has by word or writing opened such matter. He concluded most irreverently and abominably, by pointing to the king and saying that if we attempted anything against him, he [the king] should die before him.’ No wonder Edward had been petrified. The council went on to explain that they had ‘quietly taken the Tower for the king and furnished ourselves with the help of the City of London, which was loyal to the king before the Tower was ours’. They reported that the duke had removed Edward to Windsor and hoped that God would help them ‘deliver [the king] from his cruel and greedy hands. If it should come to extremity’, they added,‘which we will work to avoid - we trust you will stand by us.’
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The council’s communication to Mary referred directly to a question about the coup, and the confused months of wrangling that followed it, that has never been fully resolved. Was Mary, at any point, offered the regency? Nowadays, such a robust denial would be taken by a cynical media as proof positive that an approach had been made. Merely by acknowledging the possibility that she could undertake such a role, the council were giving it credence. It seems likely, then, that feelers were put out and that some, at least, of the new privy council considered her a viable candidate.The imperialists would certainly have backed her and, for a time,Van der Delft and others believed that the removal of Somerset was a victory for conservative forces and presaged a return to the old faith.The princess could come out of her semi-exile and use her influence to reimpose the religious settlement of Henry VIII. They were, however, deceived. For two months, the direction that the new government would take hung in the air, as a struggle for power on the council ensued. When it was over, Warwick emerged as the leader of England’s government. He soon made it plain that he had no intention of abandoning religious change; in fact, he would press forward, with Cranmer’s support. All mention of Mary as a regent disappeared.
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