Mary Tudor (34 page)

for she is utterly confounded by the faithlessness of those whom she most trusted, seeing that the greater part of these miserable creatures [the Dudley conspirators] are kith and kin or favoured servants of the greatest men in the kingdom, even Lords of the Council ...
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She was (he had it on good authority) looking ten years older, and sleeping badly. All her time was spent in tears and regrets – and in writing letters to get her husband back. Only Sir Edward Hastings and Sir Anthony Browne were still in favour. All this was greatly exaggerated by an interested party trying to prise apart the Anglo-Habsburg alliance – but it was not invented. Some of the letters we have already noticed, and there were others in the same vein.

On 6 August the privy council also took a most unusual step, and instructed that:

… upon consideration of the state of things at this time … that Mr Controller, Mr Treasurer and Mr Vicechamberlain should tomorrow in the morning call before them the officers of the household and the yeomen of the guard, and other their Majesties ordinary servants under their charges, and to enquire what armour and weapon each of them hath ...
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They were then instructed to prepare such armour in order to be mustered before Michaelmas. This would normally have happened only if the monarch had been intending to go to war in person, and is indicative of a high state of tension. Quite what was feared is not apparent. The harvest was again disastrous, the third such in a row and the worst run before the 1590s. Corn riots were inevitable, but they would not normally come anywhere near the court. Similarly the continued burning of Protestants was provoking some angry demonstrations, but these were directed against the bishops, and in no sense threatened the queen. It seems that although Noailles’s talk of hysterical collapse and near panic may be wide of the mark, Mary was nevertheless deeply disturbed by the Dudley plot, and remained edgy and depressed for months thereafter. On 10 September she launched yet another epistle at the Emperor, pleading that great – but unspecified – danger would ensue if Philip did not come to remedy matters ‘with a firm hand’. ‘Consider the miserable plight into which this country has now fallen,’ she lamented.
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This time Charles did not respond, and he probably never received the letter, because he had left for San Yuste, and retirement in all but title, by the 17th.

Philip was still receiving his regular reports from his select council, at least until the end of the summer, but they were mostly concerned with small matters of specific business, and those that have survived would not have given the king any cause for general unease. In any case, he was far too busy to fly to Mary’s assistance, even if he had felt inclined to do so. Pope Paul IV was making his hostility increasingly obvious, harrying Imperial supporters within the curia, and appointing blatantly pro-French cardinals to mediate a permanent peace between France and the Empire. Cardinal Pole (who was reasonably impartial) had lost the role of mediator when he became Archbishop of Canterbury, on the reasonable grounds that he now had other things to think about.
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By July the tension between Brussels and Rome had reached breaking point. Simon Renard (by this time ambassador in France) reported that the pope had mobilised 10,000 men, and was threatening to kill all the Spaniards he could catch. Far from negotiating peace, Paul was doing his best to break the truce that already existed. At the end of June Pole wrote to Philip, begging him to show restraint, but the pope’s behaviour was becoming increasingly impossible, and on 6 September the Duke of Alba invaded the Papal States from Naples on Philip’s orders. The French immediately came to Paul’s assistance and the Truce of Vaucelles collapsed. England was not a party to this conflict, and the French ambassador was not withdrawn, but its impact was nevertheless considerable. Philip was King of England, and the unfortunate Pole sought in vain for some guidance as to how he should conduct himself now that he was (in a sense) the servant of two masters who were at war with each other. The pope at the same time refused to conduct English business on the grounds that, as Philip’s wife, Mary was also ‘worthy of ecclesiastical censure’.
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Rather surprisingly, Mary was not particularly distressed by this thought. She was quite capable of distinguishing between her allegiance to the Holy See and the hostile behaviour of a particular pope. She set out to offer what support she could to her husband, and instructed her archbishop to carry on as normal.

In some ways the conflict seems to have lightened her mood. She was not in any doubt that her first duty was to her husband, and the privy couriers began to move backwards and forwards between them with an alacrity that had not been seen for nearly a year. So far the truce was still holding in the north, but the queen made it clear that if Henry invaded the Low Countries, then England would honour the mutual defence treaty (with Charles V) of 1543. At the beginning of December the Earl of Pembroke was sent across to Calais with reinforcements for the garrison of Calais and its environs (sometimes referred to as ‘the Pale’), rumours having been picked up that Henry Dudley had now turned his attentions in that direction. The English population of Calais had for some time included a substantial number of Protestants and fellow travellers. Although there had been relatively little persecution there, Dudley clearly thought that a subversive approach would stand a reasonable chance of success, and he did indeed establish some useful contacts.
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But he overreached himself and his espionage was detected.

Well before Christmas the English council had realised that it would only be a matter of time before Philip moved to bring England into the war. He was England’s king and his honour would require no less. With one or two exceptions they were unenthusiastic, and prepared to marshal an array of arguments against involvement. Mary, on the other hand, was keen. Here was a way in which she could do her duty as a loyal wife without compromising her authority as queen. Here also was a way in which Philip could be persuaded to come back to her.

By Christmas the king was reconciled to the fact that he would have to come to England if the realm were to be persuaded into war. He knew Mary’s mind, but did not trust her to be able to overawe her council in the way that he could. He had already demonstrated during his time in England that, in spite of problems of communication, he could knock heads together. The divisions that notoriously afflicted the council, both before his coming and after his departure, were muted during his stay. With all his limitations, he was a manmanager in a sense that Mary was not; but he would have to apply that talent in person if he wanted England in the war.

Before Christmas some of his household servants had begun to appear, and warnings were sent to his English officers to stand by for his coming. Nobody (not even Philip himself) knew when that would happen, but it was now firmly on the agenda. Mary at last began to cheer up, and the court revels over the holiday reflected her mood of anticipation. The New Year gift list that survives from 1557 is comprehensive, and certainly does not appear to reflect a court that was under any sort of a cloud. Twenty-seven peers, 18 bishops, 55 ladies of rank and over 170 other persons either paid their tributes of loyalty or received the queen’s bounty – usually both. Elizabeth was one of the principal participants.
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After what had been in many ways a taxing and distressing year, there must have been comfort for all concerned in this familiar ritual of gift exchange.

The New Year was less than two weeks old when its first crisis struck. The French broke the truce in the north with an attack upon Douai. In some ways this must have been a relief, because a breech had been expected, and such a move was bound to bring Philip’s arrival closer. Douai was not English territory, but it was covered by the treaty that Mary had promised to invoke. However, instead of invoking it at once, the queen referred the whole question to her council, and got a very chilling and discouraging response. England was not, in their opinion, bound by the earlier treaties to intervene, because this was the same war that had been going on when the marriage treaty had been drawn up. The Truce of Vaucelles had not constituted a peace settlement, and therefore its breech did not create a new war. England could not, in any case, afford to fight a war, least of all one in which her vital interests were not engaged. Nor had Philip formally requested such intervention, which was true, in spite of his known desire for it. This advice, which survives only as draft
consulta
, or memorandum, probably represents the opinion of the majority of the councillors, because it is known that some – notably Paget – favoured war.
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Pole, who was not a member of the council, had his own reasons for not wanting to see England and the papacy on opposite sides in a conflict, and he also argued strongly against it. In a sense, none of this mattered, because war and peace were decisions for the monarch to make, and the council could not prevent Mary from doing what she chose; but having asked counsel, she would have been very unwise to ignore it. What this unhelpful attitude did do, however, was to increase the need for Philip’s presence – and that was good news to Mary.

By the end of January, the king had decided that he must come. England was strategically important to his plans and had a powerful navy, although its land forces were difficult to mobilise and of doubtful quality. Those who were arguing the poverty of the kingdom’s resources after three successive harvest failures, and the consequent malnutrition and disease, had a valid point, but Philip was not expecting to raise large armies or large sums of money. What he wanted were bases and warships. Having made his decision, on 2 February Philip sent Ruy Gomez across as his harbinger, but with instructions not to discuss the war with anyone except Paget. In theory Philip was perfectly entitled to take the kingdom to war if he chose, but if the council could be overridden, Mary could not. He knew that the queen was sympathetic to his position, but he could not be sure that she would defy her own advisers in his interests. Indeed he could not be absolutely confident of his own reception, after such a long separation and in view of the strains that had arisen in their relationship. Would she be (so to speak) waiting behind the door with a rolling pin? In that respect, he need not have worried. Leaving Brussels on 8 March, ten days later he crossed from Calais to Dover and rode straight to join Mary at Greenwich. In spite of everything that had transpired, she was awaiting him with eager anticipation.
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When they were together his personal ascendancy immediately reasserted itself, and he was quickly reassured that he could count on her support.

The kingdom to which Philip now returned was not quite the same as that which he had quitted eighteen months before. In some respects the situation had improved. Parliament had (somewhat reluctantly) returned the monies collected for the traditional religious levies of ‘first fruits and tenths’ to the Church, and the clergy stood to gain substantially in the long run. A few monks had even returned to their habit, the Abbey of Westminster having been re-founded in September 1556.
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The episcopal bench had been strengthened with some new appointments, and the universities had been purged of Protestant remnants.
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Pole had convened a legatine synod in November 1555, and although it achieved little beyond the expression of good intentions, it was a satisfactory symbol of the Church’s recovery of status. In many respects the Church was in good order. Ordinations had recovered from the low point of Edward’s reign. The liturgical infrastructure had been put back in place with remarkable ease in most areas. Pole’s priorities on order and discipline could be criticised, but he also placed much emphasis on preaching. England’s was an ancient Catholic Church, in urgent need of ‘calling home again’, but it was not a mission field, and missionary orders, like the Jesuits, were not invited to participate.

On the other hand, the persecution was a running sore. Even before Cranmer’s death in March 1556, the executions had moved down the social scale. The early victims had mostly been preachers, with the occasional bishop and even the odd (minor) gentleman; but by 1556 they were nearly all weavers, husbandmen (agricultural workers) and serving maids. The crowds that gathered became increasingly hostile, and the bishops increasingly reluctant. Mary drove them on, and a polemical war in print accompanied the burnings. This was a distraction that the Church could have done without, because it merely created a context, a theatre, for truculent defiance. About 800 Protestants fled into exile, and many of them picked up radical notions that they would never have learned at home. Although the Church was steadily gaining in strength and coherence under Pole’s guidance, it had come nowhere near destroying its heretics. Instead it gave them a pretext for defiance, which their adroit propagandists succeeded in linking to the general dislike of Spaniards. The fact that Spanish King Philip and the pope were at war made no difference, and in that respect at least nothing had changed.

Consequently, in spite of some positive developments, England was not in a self-confident mood in March 1557. There was much hunger, and an influenza epidemic was reaching serious proportions. There were also persistent rumours about the queen’s health – nothing very tangible, but a nagging awareness that she was now forty-two and there was little chance of an heir. Only her life stood between the realm and an unadulterated Spanish kingship – or worse, a contested succession between Philip and Elizabeth. In theory Philip’s interest in the kingdom should have come to an end with Mary’s death, but nobody expected that to happen, and there was no shortage of pamphleteers willing to play on the anxiety. The City of London, the financial powerhouse of the kingdom, was afflicted by a sullen resentment. Not only was the religious persecution particularly unpopular in that nicodemite
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environment, but Philip had done his best to sabotage the commercial enterprise of the City by refusing its merchants access to his South American colonies, and by prohibiting their activities on the Guinea coast of Africa. This last prohibition was largely ignored in practice, but the London merchants were claiming, with some justice, that whenever there was a dispute between themselves and the Flemings (which was frequently), the king consistently took the side of the Low Countries men, irrespective of the merits of the case.
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It seemed obvious where his priorities lay – and his campaign to take England into an unnecessary war confirmed no less.