Mary Tudor (28 page)
Philip adopted a pragmatic attitude. Out of the public eye, he did not mind much who did his cooking and cleaning, so most of the ‘below-stairs’ Spanish servants were sent home. In the public eye, however, it was important to be correct, and he instructed that his public service should be performed by his English officers, and his private service by their Spanish equivalents. This sensible compromise offended everyone. The English complained that they had no access to the privy apartments, and the Spanish that they were made to appear redundant.
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After a few weeks the issue simmered down, but it never entirely disappeared while Philip was in England. There were other problems. It was understood that the king would bring his own chapel staff, so none was provided, but it was not understood that he would bring his own stable establishment. Sir Anthony Browne lasted only a matter of days as his master of the horse. The chapel was not contentious because it was accepted that he preferred clergy who were familiar with his tastes and needs, but the real reason was that he regarded all English clergy as schismatics, and although he was prepared to grit his teeth and get through the marriage service, he would not willingly employ them if he did not have to.
About thirty Imperial noblemen attended the wedding. They were not all Spaniards; a few were Flemings or Italians, but they all found themselves at a loose end after the ceremony.
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There were also a considerable number of
hidalgos
, Spanish gentlemen, and others, mostly dependents of one or other of the grandees, and equally at a loss. The obvious solution was to send them to join the Imperial army in the Low Countries, but Philip hesitated. Perhaps he felt that his honour required an attendance of his own countrymen. Meanwhile they became increasingly restive, complaining about the thieving ways of the English, and the general climate of hostility. ‘We are all longing to be off,’ one wrote, adding that in comparison ‘Flanders looks like a paradise’.
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After a few weeks, Philip yielded to their importunity, and they departed, greatly easing the tensions around the court.
Charles had warned his son against allowing his courtiers to bring their wives with them, observing that even soldiers would get on better with the islanders than these proud Iberian dames. The Duke of Alba ignored the warning, and the result demonstrated its wisdom. His duchess arrived unbidden, and complained bitterly that no suitable accommodation had been reserved for her. So grand a lady could hardly be refused an audience with the queen, but when they met, so sensitive (or competitive) was their sense of protocol that both ended up sitting on the floor, since neither was prepared to take a chair first!
The other main problem was at what might be termed the ‘bottom end’. A considerable number of small traders, jobbers and hucksters of all kinds followed the prince from Spain and other parts of his dominions, hoping to make a quick profit from his visit to England. He had no responsibility for this, but once they had arrived, many of them endeavoured to set up stalls and booths around London and near to the court. This was directly contrary to the trading privileges of the City, whose officers wasted no time in pointing this out. Philip duly expelled them, but not before there had been several violent clashes, and a few deaths for which the English were not always to blame.
With marriage came, for Mary, another novel experience. If the queen was daunted by her first sexual encounter, she was too self-disciplined to show it. On the first night of her married life, the bride bed was duly (and publicly) blessed, but then the intrusive crowds retired, and even the most intimate servants were excluded. ‘What happened thereafter,’ one observer wrote, ‘is known only to themselves,’ but he added: ‘God grant that they give us a son.’
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According to custom, and perhaps need, Mary remained invisible for the next two or three days, while Philip did a little sightseeing around Winchester. What in a normal marriage would have been the honeymoon period was by no means relaxing for him, as the problems of his household and entourage began to appear. But Mary, according to contemporary accounts, was blooming. What must have been potentially a very difficult relationship for Philip with a totally inexperienced woman eleven years his senior appears to have started well. Shortly afterwards he seems to have confided to one of his servants that the queen was not very good
para la sensualidad de la carne
(that is, sexually), but if he felt dissatisfied he clearly never allowed his wife to see it. She was predisposed to find him pleasing, and it was on that basis that he developed the personal ascendancy that he clearly enjoyed over her during the remainder of his time in England.
Meanwhile, they were a long way from London, and everyone understood that Philip’s reception there would be the first test of his kingship. On 31 July they set out from Winchester on a leisurely journey towards the capital, spending two nights at the Marquis of Winchester’s seat at Basing, and one at Reading, before reaching Windsor on 3 August. Mary discharged a certain amount of regular business during the journey, because most of her council had been present at the wedding and were accompanying her on the journey. Philip met daily with his Spanish and other Imperial councillors, not about English business but about the war and other aspects of his far-flung Continental interests. Most pressing was planning the takeover of his inheritance from his father, who was now in visibly declining health and beginning to talk of abdication.
London was not yet ready for the royal couple. This was partly because the planned entry was very elaborate and expensive, and partly because the scaffolds bearing the victims who had suffered after the Wyatt rising had only recently been taken down. The more time that could be taken to erase that unpleasant memory, the better. At Windsor an extraordinary chapter of the Order of the Garter was held, and the king was duly installed. On 11 August the royal couple moved on to Richmond, and it was while they were there that the news arrived that the French were besieging Renty. This gave Philip the pretext to get rid of most of his disgruntled followers, and it was at this point that over eighty of them departed.
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Then, London having declared itself prepared, on the 17th the royal couple moved to Suffolk Place in Southwark, ready to make a ceremonial entry on the following day.
Warmly as they had welcomed her, the English were not acclimatised to the notion of a woman on the throne. As Judith Richards pointed out a few years ago, their imagination did not extend much beyond virgins and amazons.
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As long as Mary was unmarried, they could in a sense ‘identify’ her, because virginity conferred power as well as legal status. However, once she was wedded and bedded all that changed. This had nothing to do with the law, constitutional or otherwise, but was a question of image or perception. On the one hand, there was a feeling that England was now in a sense subject to Spain, and that was deeply unpopular. But on the other hand, their beloved queen had now found a mate who would please her and give her children (the true destiny of all women). Philip was well received by the crowds who lined the roads outside Winchester Cathedral for precisely that reason.
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At the same time there was a feeling, particularly among the aristocracy, that government was man’s work, and some were prepared to welcome Philip for no other reason than that he was male and would restore a semblance of the divine order. Many nobles still saw their service to the crown principally in military terms, and were much happier with a monarch who could lead them into battle – to say nothing of providing gainful employment in his international armies. There were therefore from the start those who were temperamentally disposed to be ‘the king’s men’, both within the council and among the aristocracy at large.
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It remained to be seen what Philip would do about this.
At first, in spite of the problems over his household and the recalcitrant mutterings of some of his followers, the public image was positive. On 18 August 1554, at two o’clock in the afternoon, the royal couple crossed London Bridge and processed through the City to Whitehall. Official London did its best to erase the memory of Wyatt with six or seven splendid set-piece pageants, starting with the figures of Corineus Brittanus and Gogmagog Albionus on the bridge itself. These pageants had been long in preparation (hence the delay) and must have been vastly expensive, but unlike those that had greeted the last Spanish royal visitor, Catherine of Aragon, in 1501, they were not particularly original or imaginative.
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They were aimed rather obviously at the king: one of them concerned his descent from John of Gaunt, while others depicted the virtues of various historical and mythological Philips. Their captions were displayed only in Latin, which was probably a sensible compromise, but raises the suspicion that the City fathers did not want ordinary people to understand the extent of their flattery:
Unica Caesareae stirpis spes inclite princeps
Cui Deus imperium totius destinat orbis
Gratus et optatus nostras accedes ad oras ...
Te tamen in primis urbs Londoniensis honorat,
Incolumenque suum gaudet venisse Pbilippum …
[O noble Prince, sole hope of Caesar’s side,
By God appointed all the world to guide,
Most heartily welcome art thou to our land …
But chiefly London doth her love vouchsafe,
Rejoicing that her Philip is come safe …]
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Philip later declared that he had been received with universal joy, which would no doubt have been a great relief to the aldermen, but in fact within two days of the entry the pageants were being vandalised and had to be taken down.
Hostility and mutual suspicion between the two nations were endemic, and neither was solely responsible. Even poor Simon Renard, the Imperial ambassador, was blamed by Ruy Gomez for the confusion over the households, for no better reason (apparently) than that he was not a Spaniard.
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The real responsibility probably lay with Gomez himself. Just before the court entered London, it was reported that two noble Spanish ladies had not been received by the queen, ‘and are not going to see her, for they have not joined the court because they would have no one to talk to, as the English ladies are of evil conversation’. Nor, of course, did they speak Spanish.
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If the court was a simmering cauldron of hatred, controlled with difficulty by the joint commission, its environs were much worse. Innkeepers refused to accommodate Spaniards, or hurled abuse at them. Clergy, and especially the friars, were felt to be particularly vulnerable to anti-Spanish sentiment, ‘for 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’. Most of the evidence for this animosity comes from the Spanish side, and may have been partly a nervous overreaction to the boisterousness and curiosity of a people whose tongue they did not understand. Some Englishmen were punished for robbery, assault and murder committed upon the visitors, but equally some Spaniards were punished for similar crimes against their hosts.
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What seems clear is that the two nations were predisposed to fear and dislike each other before they ever came together, and that actual contact only made the situation worse.
Mary was said to be particularly distressed by this situation, and Philip was clearly irritated by it, but of any more specific reaction there is no sign. The fact that Simon Renard is one of the prime sources for these stories of hatred should make us cautious about taking them all at face value. Philip neither liked nor trusted him, and his confidential relationship with Mary had come to an abrupt end. He was soon complaining bitterly of his lot, and begging for recall, so his view of the political situation in September 1554 is nothing if not jaundiced:
They loudly proclaim that they are going to be enslaved, for the Queen is a Spanish woman at heart, and thinks nothing of Englishmen, but only of Spaniards and bishops.
No doubt such words were being spoken on the streets, but they were not necessarily of much significance. Philip was unfazed by the hostile clamour – if he ever heard it – and got on with the business of building himself a position in England. On 23 August he issued patents conferring pensions upon twentyone noblemen and councillors. These were drawn on his own revenues, and varied in amount from £75 a year to £500. Paget received £375, one of the highest awards, and the lord chancellor nothing – in marked contrast with their relative positions in the queen’s favour at that point.
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