Mary I 1516-1558, queen of England and Ireland, third but only surviving child of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, was born at four o'clock in the morning of Monday, 18 Feb. 1515-16, at Greenwich Palace. She was baptised with great solemnity on Wednesday, 20 Feb., in the monastery of Grey Friars, which adjoined Greenwich Palace. Margaret Pole, countess of Salisbury [qv.], carried her to the font, assisted by the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk. The Princess Catherine Plantagenet, daughter of Edward IV, and the Duchess of Norfolk were her godmothers. Cardinal Wolsey stood godfather. The infant was named Mary, after her father's favourite sister [see Mary, 1496-1533]. After baptism, the girl received the rite of confirmation, the Countess of Salisbury acting as sponsor. To the countess, a very pious catholic, the queen confided the general care of the child, while Catherine, wife of Leonard Pole (a kinsman of the countess's husband, Sir Richard Pole), was appointed her nurse, and before she was a year old, Henry Rowte, a priest, became her chaplain and clerk of the closet. For her first year Mary chiefly lived under the same roof as her parents. The autumn of 1517 she spent at the royal residence of Ditton Park, Buckinghamshire, within easy reach of Windsor. In February 1518, when she was just two, Henry VIII, carrying her in his arms, introduced her to a crowd of courtiers, including Wolsey and Sebastian Giustinian, the Venetian ambassador. All kissed the child's hand, but Mary suddenly cast her eyes on a Venetian friar, Dionisius Memo, the king's organist, and calling out, Priest, priest, summoned him to play with her (Giustinian, ii. 161; Brewer, i. 232). The childish cry—Mary's first reported words—almost seems of prophetic import. About the same time Margaret, wife of Sir Thomas Bryan, was made governess to the princess, and there were added to her household a chamberlain (Sir Weston Browne) and a treasurer (Richard Sydnour).
In 1520, while her parents were in France, Mary stayed at Richmond Palace, and gave signs of remarkable precocity. The lords of the council, writing (9 June) to her father of a visit they had just paid her, described her as right merry and in prosperous health and state, daily exercising herself in virtuous pastimes and occupations. A few days later three Frenchmen of rank visited her; she welcomed and entertained them with most goodly countenance, and surprised them with her skill in playing on the virginals, her tender age considered. She spent the Christmas following with her father at Greenwich, and seems to have thoroughly enjoyed the extravagant festivities which characterised Henry's court at that season. A dramatic performance by a man and three boys was arranged for her special benefit. Christmas of 1521 Mary celebrated at her own residence of Ditton Park, and elaborate devices were prepared by John Thurgoode, one of the valets of her household, who masqueraded as the Lord of Misrule. In February 1522 she stood godmother to the daughter of Sir William Compton, to whom she gave her own name. The child was the first of a long succession of infants to whom the princess stood in a like relation.
Before she left her cradle Mary had become a recognised factor in her father's political intrigues with his two continental rivals, Francis I and Charles V. On 28 Feb. 1517-1518 a son was born to Francis, and Wolsey straightway opened negotiations for a marriage between Mary and the new-born heir of France (Giustinian, ii. 177). By 9 July the articles were drawn up; in September a richly furnished embassy was sent by Francis to complete the treaty. On 5 Oct. 1518 bridal ceremonies took place at Greenwich amid a splendour which suggested to the Venetian ambassador a comparison with the court of Cleopatra or Caligula. The princess was dressed in cloth of gold, and her cap of black velvet blazed with jewels. The dauphin was represented by Admiral Bonnivet, who placed a diamond ring on Mary's finger, and Wolsey celebrated mass. The ceremony was, according to the treaty, to be repeated when the dauphin was fourteen, and Mary was then to be sent to Abbeville with a dowry of 330,000 crowns (Giustinian, ii. 225-6, 234; Rymer, xiii. 624, 631; Brewer, i. 194-201).
But within a twelvemonth Wolsey and his master changed their view of foreign policy. The attentions they had paid to Francis they transferred to his rival, the young Emperor Charles V, Queen Catherine's nephew, and they at once suggested a marriage between Charles and his cousin Mary (Brewer, i. 326-7). Through the next two years Charles, who had at least two other matrimonial alliances in view, dallied with the suggestion. At length, on 29 July 1521, Wolsey, in order to bring the matter to an issue, met the envoys of the emperor at Calais, and it was finally arranged that Charles, who was already twenty-three years old, should marry the princess by proxy when she was twelve, that is, in six years' time. In June 1522 Charles V arrived on a visit to the English court, and the terms were signed at Windsor. According to Hall, Charles showed much interest in his future bride, his young cosyn germain, and his attendants declared that she was likely to prove handsome.
For three years this engagement continued, and at first there seemed every likelihood of its fulfilment. But difficulties arose. The emperor desired that his bride should be brought up in Spain. Henry hesitated to comply. In 1524 James IV of Scotland opened negotiations for a marriage between Mary and himself (Rymer, xiv. 27), and although Wolsey had no intention of accepting such a plan, he gave it diplomatic consideration. Rumours were also circulated abroad that the French king had renewed proposals on the same subject. But as late as 1525 Charles affected to accept assurances that Henry still regarded him as Mary's sole suitor. In March of that year commissioners from the Low Countries paid their respects to Mary and her mother, and the former made a short speech in Latin. In April, under Wolsey's guidance, she sent the emperor a ring with an emerald, the symbol of constancy, and a message attesting her affection. The emperor said he would wear the ring for the sake of the princess. But in August he announced that since Henry had sent him neither the princess nor her dowry, he had changed his plans, and was about to marry Isabella, daughter of Emanuel, king of Portugal. In September Henry, after much diplomatic wrangling, released him from his engagement, and Charles married Isabella in March 1526.
Mary was little more than ten, but it seemed unlikely that Catherine would bear the king other children, and it became desirable to increase her prestige as heiress to the throne. In September 1525, when the rupture of the engagement with Charles V grew imminent, she was sent to Ludlow Castle, the seat of the Welsh government, with power to hold courts of oyer and determiner and to supervise the administration of law in Wales. A house at Tickenhill, Worcestershire, built by Henry VII for his heir Arthur, was also repaired for her use; a large retinue of courtiers was bestowed on her, and a council was constituted for her under the presidency of John Voysey [qv.]. It does not appear that she was formally created Princess of Wales, although her removal to Ludlow was clearly intended to endow her with all the rights attaching to that title, and outside purely legal documents she was so designated. A nearly contemporary inscription in the chapel at Ludlow set forth that John Voysey was sent to be L. President in the tyme of the Ladye Mary, Princess of Wales, Ao 17 H. 8. her father (Lansd. MS. 255, f. 476; H. R. C[live], Hist. of Ludlow, p. 156). Similarly Linacre, when dedicating his Rudiments (1523) to Mary, had addressed her as Princess of Cornwall and Wales. The Christmas of 1525 Mary kept at Ludlow with befitting pomp.
Her parents had no wish that her entrance into political life should hinder her general education. Catherine had given her her earliest instruction in Latin. In 1523 Linacre wrote a Latin grammar, Rudimenta Grammatices, for her use, and in the dedication he commended her love of learning; while William Lily added some verses in which he described her as Virgo, qua nulla est indole fertilior. The queen also sought the advice of Johannes Ludovicus Vives, a Spaniard, who prepared early in 1523, for the guidance of Mary, his De Institutione Feminæ Christianæ, Antwerp, 1524, 4to, and dedicated it to Catherine. In accordance with Vives's rigid curriculum, Latin and Greek were her chief subjects of study, but her reading included the Paraphrases of Erasmus, the Utopia of Sir Thomas More, Livy, Aulus Gellius, and the tale of Griselda. In the autumn of 1523 Vives visited England and continued his counsels in his De Ratione Studii Puerilis. When Mary left for Ludlow, Richard Fetherston [qv.] accompanied her as her schoolmaster, and royal instructions to her council dwelt on the need of allowing her moderate exercise and wholesome food, and of insisting on cleanliness in her dress and person. Philip van Wylder taught her the lute, and one Paston the virginals, while she was also a skilful executant on the regals. In 1527, when she was eleven, Mary translated a Latin prayer of St. Thomas Aquinas into very good English, and transcribed it into her missal (Madden, cxxviii). In Latin, French, and Spanish she soon was able to converse with ease, but although she knew Italian she rarely spoke it. According to Crispin, lord of Milherve, writing in 1536, she also studied astronomy, geography, natural science, and mathematics. Much of her leisure she occupied in embroidery work.
While the princess was at Ludlow in 1526, Wolsey made a determined effort to marry her to Francis I. The king of France was a widower, thirty-two years old, and of notoriously abandoned life. And he was engaged at the time to the emperor's sister, Eleanor of Austria, widow of Emanuel the Great, king of Portugal. But both Francis and his mother, Louise of Savoy, at first affected to favour Wolsey's proposal. Louise told the envoys that Francis had long been anxious to marry Mary for her manifold virtues and other good qualities. On 26 Feb. 1527 Grammont, bishop of Tarbes, François, vicomte Turenne, and the president of Paris arrived at Dover, prepared to complete the negotiations. Wolsey saw them at Westminster on 3 March, and Henry received them at Greenwich four days later. Francis was obviously an undesirable suitor, and his relations with Eleanor offered a serious obstacle. After much discussion it was agreed on 22 March that in case Francis was unable or unwilling finally to accept the princess, she should be married to his second son, Henry, duke of Orleans. On 30 April the treaties were signed and sealed, and for a third time it was pretended that provision had been made for Mary's future. She was meanwhile summoned from Ludlow. On 23 April the French commissioners dined with the king at Greenwich, and after dinner were introduced to her. By Henry's wish they addressed her in French, Latin, and Italian, and after answering them in the same languages, she performed on the spinet. Great rejoicings were held on 5 May. A splendid pageant was prepared at Greenwich at a cost of 8,000l. After dinner the princess danced with the French ambassador Turenne, who considered her very handsome and admirable by reason of her great and uncommon mental endowments, but so thin, sparse, and small as to render it impossible for her to be married for the next three years.
These festivities were the last in which Mary was to join with any lightness of heart. No sooner had the French envoys left England than Henry broached his scheme of divorcing himself from Mary's mother. In July Wolsey visited Francis, and hinted at the possibility of such a step. He pretended that it was first suggested to the king by some doubts of Mary's legitimacy raised by the Bishop of Tarbes during the recent marriage negotiations, on the ground that Catherine's first husband was Henry's brother. It is unlikely that the bishop made any such suggestion. Meanwhile the French marriage scheme was still seriously accepted. But on 3 Aug. Wolsey told Francis I that although, as Mary's godfather, he desired Francis to marry her, it would be politic, in face of the emperor's known objections, to hand her finally over to Francis's son.
As the scheme for the divorce took practical shape, Mary's position greatly increased Henry's difficulties. The first rumours of the project were received with every sign of popular disapproval, chiefly on Mary's account. In London, according to Hall, the citizens asserted that, whomsoever the king should marry, they would recognise no successor to the crown but the husband of the Lady Mary. To prevent the formation of a political party in her favour her household at Ludlow was broken up, and she rejoined the queen. In 1528 she was at Ampthill, and was corresponding with Wolsey, whom she ingenuously credited, in a Latin letter, with giving her the ‘supreme delight’ of spending a month with her parents (Green, ii. 32-3). This is the first letter of hers that is extant. In October it occurred to Henry that to marry her at once might divert the popular hostility to the divorce. With a revolting indifference to natural sentiment he decided to invite Pope Clement VII to issue a special dispensation for her marriage with his natural son, the Duke of Richmond, a boy of nine. The pope expressed his willingness to consider the proposal, but only on condition that the divorce should be abandoned (Letters and Papers, vol. iv. pt. ii. pp. 2113, 2210). The plan accordingly went no further. Anne Boleyn thereupon urged that the Duke of Norfolk's youthful heir, afterwards famous as the Earl of Surrey, would be a desirable suitor. Clement VII fully approved this suggestion, but the turn of events soon rendered it nugatory [see Howard, Henry, 1517?-1554; Bapst, Deux Gentilshommes poètes de la cour de Henry VIII, 1891].
For the three years (1529-32), during which the divorce was proceeding to its tragic close, Mary was chiefly with her mother, although a separate household was maintained for her at Newhall, near Chelmsford, Essex. The Countess of Salisbury still attended her, and Mary was much in the society of the countess's son, Reginald Pole. The strong catholic feeling which Mary had inherited from her mother was stimulated by the religious fervour of the countess and her son. Until her death Mary showed marked affection for the latter, but it is unnecessary to infer (with Miss Strickland) that a marriage between them was in contemplation at this period. At the close of 1531 Pole denounced the divorce to Henry himself in strong terms, and left England, not to return for twenty-three years. Immediately afterwards mother and daughter were parted. Mary was taken to Richmond. Six months later she was allowed to rejoin Catherine for a few weeks, but at the conclusion of this visit mother and daughter never met again. With much pathos Catherine wrote to Mary, asking to be allowed occasionally to inspect her Latin exercises. In 1533, when Catherine learned of Henry's private marriage with Anne Boleyn, she wrote bidding her daughter, who was at Newhall, treat her father discreetly and inoffensively, and sent her two Latin books, ‘the “De Vita Christi,” with the declarations of the gospels, and the other the “Epistles of St. Jerome” that he did write to Paula and Eustochium.’
Naturally proud and high-spirited, Mary stood firmly by her mother. The king's friends sought to discount the effect of her uncompliant attitude by ascribing it to the obstinacy inherent in the children of Spanish mothers. In Anne Boleyn's eyes the princess was her worst enemy, and after the birth of her daughter Elizabeth (7 Sept. 1533) Anne exerted all her influence over the king to secure Mary's humiliation. Parliament at once passed an act regulating the succession to the crown, by which, in view of the alleged nullity of Catherine's marriage, Mary was adjudged illegitimate, and Anne's children were declared to be alone capable of succeeding to the throne.
The privy council at the same time bade Mary lay aside the title of princess. She declined to obey, although warned that her arrogance might involve her in a charge of high treason (Green, Letters, ii. 243-4). In December 1533 the Duke of Norfolk was sent to Newhall to inform her that her household was to be broken up and she was to reside henceforth with her sister at Hatfield (Friedmann, i. 266-7). She signed a formal protest, but set out within half an hour of receiving the message. At Hatfield she was entrusted to the care of Lady Shelton, a sister of Anne's father, who was ordered to beat Mary if she persisted in disobeying the king's commands.
Mary was well aware that her attitude was warmly approved by an influential party at court and in the country. One morning while at Hatfield the neighbouring peasants greeted her on the balcony of the house as their only rightful princess. Anne therefore recommended that steps should be taken to prevent her receiving friends likely to uphold her pretensions. Henry Courtenay, marquis of Exeter, and his wife were forbidden to visit her. Lady Hussey, wife of John, lord Hussey [q.v.], chamberlain of her household, was sent to the Tower for inadvertently addressing her as princess. Her papers were searched by Cromwell's order, and writing materials were denied her. But Mary's spirit was not easily broken, and she soon recognised that she had a powerful protector in her mother's nephew and her former suitor, Charles V. The imperial ambassador, Chapuys, found many opportunities of offering her advice, and of protesting before the king and the council against the indignities to which she was subjected. He wisely recommended her to submit whenever actual violence was threatened, in the belief that repeated contumacy might cost her her life. In June 1534 he reported that Anne seriously meditated her murder. In the following months rumours on the subject reached Mary herself. She begged Chapuys to arrange for her flight to Flanders, but while the plan was under consideration she fell seriously ill at Greenwich. Henry visited her and allowed Dr. Butts to attend her, but he told Lady Shelton in the presence of the servants that Mary was his worst enemy. Her supporters were spurred to fresh efforts. In April 1535 Mary had recovered sufficiently to be removed to Eltham, and as she left Greenwich she was cheered by a crowd of women of the upper and middle class, including the wives of Lord Rochford and Lord William Howard. At length, even Cromwell, according to Chapuys, inclined to the opinion that her death would best meet the difficulty caused by the popular sentiment in her favour. The wildest reports of her treatment spread abroad, and an impostor¾one Anne Baynton¾obtained much money and hospitality in Yorkshire by representing herself as the dishonoured princess who had been turned out of house and home and was about to join the emperor in the Low Countries (Green, ii. 24).
Queen Catherine died 7 Jan. 1535-6 at Kimbolton. At the close of 1535, when she was dying, she earnestly requested that Mary might visit her, or failing that, that her daughter might take up her residence in the neighbourhood. Both requests were refused. Mary's grief was intense, but her mother's death was followed by a change in Anne's attitude towards her. The queen, conscious that her own influence over Henry was waning, fell back on a conciliatory policy; she promised to be a second mother to Mary if she would submit to the king. The princess declared that she was ready to obey her father in all things saving her honour and conscience, but she would never abjure the pope.
Anne Boleyn's execution in May 1536 relieved Mary of her most determined foe. Jane Seymour, Anne's successor as Henry's queen, had always regarded Mary and her mother with sympathy, and Mary, worn out with the three years' conflict, was anxious to seek a reconciliation with her father. Chapuys, too, advised surrender. He believed that the king was incapable of begetting more children, and seeing that Elizabeth was to be declared a bastard and that the Duke of Richmond was on his deathbed, he concluded that Mary, if she conducted herself with tact, was certain of the succession. She was allowed writing materials once again, and she sent a letter to Cromwell (26 May 1536) begging him to secure her father's blessing and permission to write to him. On 10 June she wrote asking Henry's forgiveness for her past offences. The king was quite willing to pardon her, but his terms were hard. Mary was to acknowledge her mother's marriage to be illegal, her own birth illegitimate, and the king's supremacy over the church absolute. At first she hesitated. She could not assent, she said, to what she held to be inconsistent with the laws of God, and she explained her doubts to Cromwell. The minister sent an angry reply. She was, he told her, the ‘most obstinate and obdurate woman, all things considered, that ever was.’ The pressure put on her had its effect, and the obnoxious articles were at length signed. One more demand was made. She was directed to take the oath of supremacy. Again she held back, but her friends hardly appreciated her resistance, and neither Chapuys nor his master counselled it. The Duke of Norfolk and Lord Sussex, who were sent to administer the oath to her, told her that if she was their daughter ‘they would knock her head against the wall till it was as soft as a baked apple.’ Mary did as she was requested, and friends and foes were satisfied. She had hopes that a papal absolution might relieve her of the pains of perjury. On 8 July Chapuys wrote: ‘Her treatment improves every day; she never had so much liberty as now. ¼ She will want nothing in future but the name of Princess of Wales, and that is of no consequence; for all the rest she will have more abundantly than before’ (Spanish Cal. vol. v. pt. ii. p. 221). On 21 July she wrote to thank her father for his ‘gracious mercy and fatherly pity surmounting mine offences at this time.’
Finally, on 9 Dec. 1536 she revisited the royal palace at Richmond. ‘My daughter,’ Henry is reported to have said, ‘she who did you so much harm and prevented me from seeing you for so long, has paid the penalty’ (Spanish Chronicle of Henry VIII, ed. Sharp Hume, p. 72). At New Year of 1537 she received handsome presents from the king, Cromwell, and the queen. Soon afterwards she revisited Newhall, returning to the court at Greenwich, and leaving it for Westminster at the end of February. In March she was at St. James's Palace, and for the rest of the year she was constantly moving from one royal palace in the neighbourhood of London to another. Throughout the period Mary showed many amiable personal traits. Her attendants always received every consideration from her, and in behalf of the servants discharged on her mother's death she wrote many letters to influential friends (Green, ii. 320). One of her maids of honour whom the king dismissed is said to have died of grief at her separation from her mistress (Spanish Cal. 1538-42, p. 309). Mary at all times distributed pensions and charitable gifts with as much freedom as her circumstances would allow, and displayed a natural liking for children by accepting numerous invitations to act as godmother. She stood sponsor for fifteen children during 1537, among them for her new-born brother Edward (afterwards Edward VI), to whom she gave a gold cup.
The death of Queen Jane, twelve days after her son's birth (October 1537), was a serious grief to Mary, but it strengthened the ties between her and her father. When the dead queen lay in state in Hampton Court chapel, Mary knelt as chief mourner at the head of the coffin while masses and dirges were sung; she rode on horseback in the funeral procession from Hampton Court to Windsor, figured as chief mourner at the burial, paid for thirteen masses for the repose of the queen's soul, and gave money to the queen's servants. She stayed with her father at Windsor till Christmas, and took a very tender interest in her brother and godson, Edward, whom she constantly visited throughout his infancy.
Mary's position was rendered less secure in the next year, 1538. The northern rebels had made Mary's restoration to royal rank one of their demands, and she had displeased Cromwell and Henry by entertaining some desolate strangers, apparently dispossessed nuns. The somewhat similar insurrection in the west now impelled Cromwell to proceed to extremities against those who still resisted the Act of Supremacy, and many of Mary's intimate friends suffered death. The Countess of Salisbury, Mary's governess, was sent to the Tower, with two of her sons; she was executed in 1541. Henry Courtenay, marquis of Exeter, was executed early in 1539, and two years later her school-master, Fetherston, and her mother's chaplain, Abel, suffered a like fate. Mary seems herself to have been kept in gentle restraint during 1539 at Hertford Castle. But her conduct did not justify harsh treatment. She had been receiving 40l. a quarter, and before Christmas 1539 she complained to Cromwell that the allowance was insufficient for the expenses of the festive season. Thereupon the king sent her 100l., and Cromwell a horse and saddle.
Meanwhile the desirability of finding a husband for Mary was still recognised by the king and his councillors. Even during her disgrace the question had been discussed. In 1534 her friends had proposed that Alessandro de' Medici, the nephew of the pope, would be a suitable match, but the king intervened and declared such a union was unfitted to her rank. In 1536 the French offered to open negotiations for her marriage with the dauphin, and Charles V favoured the scheme in the belief that Francis I might be thus induced to force Henry into a recognition of Mary's claim to the English throne. After her reconciliation, a more serious proposal was made, with the approval of Charles V, to unite her with Don Luiz, the heir to the crown of Portugal. In February 1538 negotiations had progressed so far that the young man's father wrote to Henry expressing his satisfaction at the expected alliance. But disputes arose over the income to be allotted Mary in Portugal. Moreover Henry demanded that Charles V should give Don Luiz the duchy of Milan, and when the question of the princess's relations to the English succession was raised, Henry offered to increase her dowry on condition that she renounced all claims to the English crown. The negotiation consequently proved abortive (cf. Spanish Cal. 1538-42, pp. xviii, xix).
Next year (1538) Cromwell, following in the footsteps of Wolsey, resolved to make Mary directly serve his diplomatic purposes. Anxious that Henry should ally himself with the protestant princes of the empire and marry Anne of Cleves, he believed that the scheme might be facilitated by the immediate union of Mary with Anne's only brother, William. In December 1538 the English envoys, Christopher Mont and Thomas Paynell, arrived at the court of the elector of Saxony, brother-in-law of William of Cleves, to promote the plan, and Cromwell directed them to dwell on Mary's beauty and accomplishments, although they were to admit that she was ‘his Grace's daughter natural only.’ In the next few months the negotiations for the king's marriage with Anne of Cleves proceeded satisfactorily, and Cromwell, in order to strengthen his policy, thought fit to lay aside the negotiations for Mary's marriage with the Duke of Cleves in order to substitute a more influential suitor from among the German protestant princes¾Duke Philip of Bavaria, a nephew of Lewis V, elector of the Palatinate. The duke had come to England to herald the arrival of Anne of Cleves, and in December 1539 his suit for Mary's hand was accepted by the king. Mary told Wriothesley, who brought the announcement to her, that she would never enter the religion of her proposed husband, and desired ‘to continue still a maid during her life.’ To Cromwell, however, she wrote expressing compliance with her father's will, and while on a visit to her brother at Enfield, Cromwell introduced the duke to her. The duke kissed her, and declared his readiness to marry her. The conversation was carried on partly in German with an interpreter, and partly in Latin. A treaty was drawn up, and it is preserved, in the handwriting of Tunstall, bishop of Durham, in MS. Cotton Vitell. c. xi. (ff. 287-290, 296). Mary was declared incapable of the English succession, but she was to receive handsome incomes from both her father and the duke. In January 1540 the latter left England in order to obtain his uncle's ratification of the arrangement, and gave Mary a cross in diamonds.
But Henry's rejection of Anne and Cromwell's fall followed within five months, and the change in the king's policy relieved Mary of her protestant suitor (cf. Spanish Chronicle, p. 57). Despite their differences in religious matters, Mary was apparently touched by the misfortunes of Anne of Cleves, and remained on good terms with her after her retirement from public life. With Henry's fifth queen, Catherine Howard, Mary does not seem to have been very friendly (Cal. Spanish State Papers, 1538-42, p. 295). Two months after Catherine Howard's execution (in January 1542), Henry made a final effort to marry Mary to the Duke of Orleans. The terms were formally considered at Chablis in Burgundy in April 1542, but a financial dispute between the English and French envoys, Paget and Bonnivet, proved insuperable. In June a report that Mary had secretly married the emperor was current on the continent. War with France was at the time growing imminent, and the French marriage scheme was finally abandoned.
Christmas 1542 Mary spent with her father at Westminster, and she attended in the following July his marriage to his sixth wife, Catherine Parr. She accompanied the king and queen on their autumn progress to Woodstock, Grafton, and Dunstable. With Catherine Parr she was always on amiable relations. All Mary's disabilities were now to be removed. Henry, seeing that an outbreak of war with France was inevitable, was anxious to conciliate Charles V at all points, and the latter seized the opportunity of insisting on Mary's restoration to the succession. On 7 Feb. 1544 an act of parliament entailed the crown upon her after Edward or any other child that should be born to the king in lawful wedlock. Of Mary's legitimacy nothing was said. Ten days later she took part with the queen in the reception of the Spanish Duke de Najera, and attracted favourable attention. She danced at a court ball, and the duke's secretary sent word to Spain that she was not only pleasing in person but very popular. Later in the year Mary, at Queen Catherine Parr's suggestion, translated Erasmus's Latin paraphrase of St. John, and the queen subsequently induced her to allow her work to be printed, with a translation of the rest of Erasmus's paraphrases by various authors, under the direction of Dr. Francis Mallett [q.v.]. It appeared in 1551-2. Dr. Udall in the preface wrote that England would ‘never be able, as her deserts require, enough to praise the most noble, the most virtuous, and the most studious Lady Mary's grace for taking such pains and travail.’ Towards the end of Henry's reign the emperor once more suggested a matrimonial alliance between Mary and himself, and when Duke Philip of Bavaria revisited England in 1546, he too renewed his old proposal. But on 23 Jan. 1546-7 Henry died, and, despite the numerous negotiations, Mary was still unmarried. The king is reported to have summoned her to his deathbed, to have expressed his sympathy with her for her past misfortunes, and to have bidden her be a mother to her little brother (Spanish Chronicle, p. 151). Henry left her, while she was unmarried, 3,000l. a year, chiefly drawn from the manors of Newhall, Hunsdon, and Kenninghall, and on her marriage (provided she married with the council's consent) 10,000l., with such jewellery and plate as the council should determine.
Mary was now thirty-one years old, and thus twenty years the new king's senior. Despite the discrepancy in their ages, and although Edward had with characteristic precocity occasionally presumed to advise her on religious topics, they had always been in affectionate relations with each other. Nor was Mary at first on other than friendly terms with her brother's chief advisers, although the deprivation in March of her old acquaintance, Lord-chancellor Wriothesley, a staunch catholic, caused her disquietude. On 24 April she wrote in the friendliest terms to Somerset's wife, asking that the necessities of two old servants of her mother might be generously met. To her sister Elizabeth, her junior by seventeen years, she also showed a sisterly tenderness. During the reign of her brother Mary spent her time chiefly at the country houses appointed for her under her father's will¾Newhall, Hunsdon, or Kenninghall (cf. Acts of Privy Council, 1547-50, pp. 84, 92).
In the autumn (1547) she expressed her first misgivings of Edward's religious policy. She complained to Somerset that he was not upholding catholic principles in accordance with her father's design, nor was he educating her brother in them. Somerset contested her interpretation of her father's wishes. Christmas was spent with her brother and sister, but this was the only occasion during the reign in which she took part in festivities at court. In the autumn of 1548 she paid a visit to St. James's Palace. The protector's brother, Lord Seymour, who had just lost his wife, Catherine Parr (7 Sept.), proposed to introduce to her his attendant, Walter Earle, to give her lessons on the virginals, and offered to marry her. But he was a protestant who was bent on her conversion to his views, and his advances were not encouraged. Moreover, Mary was once again the object of other suitors' attentions. In March 1547-8 the Duke of Ferrara ‘gave grateful ear’ to an English envoy's suggestion that the princess should marry his son (Cal. State Papers, For. 1547-53, p. 17). Don Luiz of Portugal was a second time put forward, and between August 1548 and June 1549 his claim was formally discussed in the council. The Duke of Brunswick and the Marquis of Brandenburg¾both protestants¾were also willing to marry her. But serious illness attacked Mary in the summer of 1549 while she was at Kenninghall, and interrupted matrimonial negotiations.
Religious matters were also absorbing her attention anew. Early in 1549 the Act of Uniformity had passed through parliament. The mass was prohibited after the following May. Mary resolved to disobey the order, and fearlessly entered on the second great struggle of her life. On 16 June 1549 the council advised her to give order that the mass should be no more used in her house (Acts of the Privy Council, pp. 291-2). On 22 June Mary addressed a protest to Somerset from Kenninghall. In matters of religion, she told him, she was resolute. She declined to recognise the ‘late law.’ She would give ear to no one who should try to move her contrary to her conscience, but hoped to prove ‘a natural and humble sister to the king’ (Foxe, vi. 7-8). Somerset's fall in October caused Mary a short respite. Warwick, his victorious rival, addressed to her and to Elizabeth a detailed narrative of their quarrel. Warwick had been falsely credited with a design to make Mary regent of the realm. He now invited her to stand with his party. But Mary showed no sign of interest in the quarrel, and Warwick, as soon as his power was established, pursued Somerset's policy towards her. As in former difficulties, she appealed to the emperor. Early in 1550 his ambassador brought the matter before the council. Some promise seems to have been given in April that while the open celebration was forbidden the private exercise of her religious observances would be permitted. Charges, however, were soon brought against her that she invited any who would to attend the services in her chapel, and that she filled the neighbouring pulpits with her chaplains. She was ill in November 1550, and about the same time Edward complained that she refused to meet him on his invitation at Woking. In the winter the Duchess of Suffolk, with her daughters Jane, Catherine, and Mary, paid her a visit in state.
But Mary still chafed under the refusal of the council to allow her full religious freedom. On 16 Feb. 1550-1 she reminded them of their promise, and asked that the permission should be continued till Edward reached ‘years of more discretion’ (Acts of Privy Council, 1550-2, p. 215). On 15 March 1551 she took the bold step of travelling from Wanstead with a numerous retinue, ‘every one having a pair of beads of black’ (Machyn, p. 5), to lay her case before Edward at Westminster. She appeared with her brother in the council chamber, and declared that ‘her soul was God's, and her faith she would not change, nor dissemble her opinion with contrary words’ (Journal, p. 308). She denied that her ‘good, sweet’ brother was responsible for her persecution, and the wording of his ‘Journal’ fails to imply that he took any active part in her interview with the council.
On 18 March 1550-1 the imperial ambassador plainly told the council that were she further molested he would quit the country and war would be declared (ib. p. 309). The king's ministers hesitated to risk the danger, and for the present did nothing beyond arresting her chaplain, Mallett, and dismissing Rochester, the controller of her household. These steps called forth an earnest protest from Mary, and Charles V was ill inclined to let the dispute end thus. In June he said to Dr. Wotton, the English ambassador at his court: ‘My cousin the princess is evil handled among you ¼ I will not suffer it. ¼ I had rather she died a thousand deaths than that she should forsake her faith and mine’ (Cal. State Papers, For. 1547-50, p. 137). In August he sent a member of his council, Scepper, to make preparations for bringing Mary to Antwerp, to join his sister the queen of Hungary. Ships arrived off the east coast, and Sir John Gates was sent to watch the route between Newhall and the sea, in order to intercept Mary and her friends if they endeavoured to escape. On 14 Aug. 1551 the council informed her that her religious rites must cease altogether. The king's forbearance had not reduced her to obedience ‘of her own disposition,’ and his long sufferance of her insubordination was a subject of great strife and contention. She sent the messengers back with a passionate letter of remonstrance to the king. The mass, she reminded him, had been used by his father and all his predecessors. The council had promised the emperor to leave her in peace. Death would be more welcome than life with a troubled conscience (19 Aug.). The council made further efforts with the same result. She offered to lay her head on the block rather than submit. In the heat of the moment she taunted the members of one deputation from the council with having been made by her father ‘almost out of nothing.’ For practical purposes the final victory lay with her.
Mary paid a visit in formal state to Edward at Greenwich in June 1552, and next month Lady Jane Grey again visited her at Newhall. On 8 Sept. Bishop Ridley came to see her as her diocesan when she was at Hunsdon. She received him with perfect courtesy and invited him to dinner with her household, but sternly declined his offer to preach before her next Sunday (Foxe, vi. 354). In February of the new year, 1553, she paid a third state visit to Edward at Westminster, riding through the city, attended by many noblemen and ladies (Machyn, Diary). The king's friends declared that he grew melancholy in his later years whenever he saw his sister, while Mary's supporters insisted that he always showed delight in her society, and was so gentle in his demeanour towards her that she confidently anticipated his conversion to her opinions. The former view seems the sounder (Clifford, Life of Jane Dormer, p. 61). But on 16 May she sent her brother from Newhall a kindly note, ‘scribbled with a rude hand,’ congratulating him on a reported improvement in his health. It was her last communication with him. On 6 July he died, but for some days she was left in ignorance of the event.
Northumberland had contrived that Edward on his deathbed should disinherit both his sisters in favour of his own daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey, and as soon as the throne was vacant it was Northumberland's intention to seize Mary's person. The council sent her a deceitful message at Hunsdon, bidding her visit the king, who was very ill. According to the doubtful story of Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, she was met on her road at Hoddesdon by her London goldsmith, who had been secretly despatched by Throgmorton to warn her of the king's death and of her danger (Chron. of Queen Jane, p. 1, note b). Easily convinced of the council's deceit, she resolved to make for Kenninghall. The night was spent at Sawston Hall, the house of Mr. Huddleston; but the citizens of Cambridge, strongly puritan in feeling, soon sallied forth to attack the house, and Mary set out in the early morning, disguised, it is said, as a market-woman. She was well received at Bury St. Edmunds, where the news of the king's death had not yet arrived, and she reached Kenninghall the same night. On 9 July she forwarded a remonstrance to the council, declaring that she knew their enmity, but offered an amnesty if they proclaimed her queen forthwith. The council next day proclaimed Lady Jane, informed Mary that she was a bastard, and advised her to submit to the new régime. Accompanied by the tenantry of Sir Henry Jerningham and Sir Henry Bedingfield, Mary thereupon proceeded to the castle at Framlingham, once the property of the Duke of Norfolk. The castle could stand a siege if necessary, and at the worst she could escape thence to the continent. Her standard was set up over the gate tower, and the gentlemen of Suffolk with their attendants flocked round her. Thirteen thousand men were soon encamped about the castle. On 13 July Mary was proclaimed queen at Norwich, and the corporation ‘sent men and weapons to aid her’ (Chron. p. 8). But it was not only in the eastern counties that the tide rapidly turned in her favour. On 16 July a placard posted on Queenhithe Church asserted that Mary had been proclaimed queen everywhere except in London. The same day the Earls of Sussex and Bath, seceding from the council, arrived at Framlingham at the head of an armed force. On the 18th rewards were offered to any one taking Northumberland prisoner. On the 19th she was proclaimed in London amid ‘bell ringing, blazes, and shouts of applause.’ Northumberland was arrested at Cambridge, and many of his supporters went to Mary to make their submission. On 31 July Mary broke up the camp at Framlingham, and began a peaceful progress to London. At Wanstead, on 3 Aug., she disbanded all her army except a body of horse, and was met by her sister Elizabeth. With a great escort of ladies and gentlemen, including all the foreign ambassadors, she rode into London, arriving at Aldgate, where she was received by the lord mayor. She went direct to the Tower. The prisoners detained by her father and brother, including the old Duke of Norfolk [see Howard, Thomas, 1473-1554], the young Edward Courtenay [q.v.], son of her early friend the Marquis of Exeter, and Stephen Gardiner [q.v.], were at once released. On the day of the king's funeral (8 Aug.) she attended mass in her private chapel.
Mary had adhered to her faith at the cost of much persecution in her earlier life, and now the opportunity had come of making it finally prevail among her countrymen. She at once announced her intention to Henry of France and her cousin Charles V, and with the imperial ambassador, Simon Renard, she soon placed herself in very confidential relations. Gardiner and Bonner were restored to their sees (Winchester and London). The former was made chancellor and practically became her prime minister. The powerful Marquis of Winchester was allowed to retain his post of treasurer, but comparatively few of her brother's advisers remained members of her council. She invited the Duke of Norfolk and the Earls of Derby and Shrewsbury to join it, and gave a greater preponderance in it to members of the old nobility than either her father or brother had done. But she unfortunately made it inconveniently large, and it quickly split into hostile cliques whose quarrels caused her grave embarrassments (cf. Acts of Privy Council, 1552-4, p. xxxii). Of the work of government Mary resolved to take her full share. In the first two years of her reign she rose at daybreak and transacted business incessantly until after midnight. She was always ready to give audiences to the members of her council and to others of her subjects, and required every detail of public affairs to be submitted to her (Venetian Cal. 1534-54, p. 533). But Gardiner, like Renard, saw more clearly than the queen the need of caution in her religious policy. As early as 13 Aug. a riot had broken out at St. Paul's Cross, when the preacher, Gilbert Bourne [q.v.], had denounced the religious innovations of the late government. Even among the catholic noblemen, opposition to a full restoration of the Roman establishment was probable if the restitution of the church property confiscated during the last two reigns were insisted on. Mary, acting on Gardiner's and Renard's advice, consequently showed much judgment in issuing on 18 Aug. her first proclamation, in which she appealed to all men to embrace the ancient religion; but after warning the two parties against reviling each other as idolaters or heretics, she promised that religion should be settled by common consent, that is to say in parliament (Foxe, iii. 18). But at the same time she directed the restitution of much church plate (Acts P. C. 1552-4, pp. 338 sq.), and gave plain warnings to ‘busy meddlers in religion.’ A few weeks later she secretly received a visit from Francesco Commendone, chamberlain to Pope Julius III. He came in disguise. Mary told him that she desired to restore the papal supremacy as well as catholic worship, and gave him an autograph letter to the pope. The pope, she was informed, had already designated Pole as papal legate in England, and she asked that he might come to her forthwith.
On 22 Aug. Northumberland and six of his allies were tried and condemned, but only three, Northumberland, Sir John Gates, and Sir Thomas Palmer, were executed. Mary allowed the duke proper burial. Quietly enjoying her triumph, she showed no vindictiveness in dealing with her enemies. Giacomo Soranzo, the Venetian ambassador, reported to his government in 1554 that had her own wishes been consulted none of the prisoners would have been executed, but she yielded to the representations of her council (Venetian Cal. 1534-54, p. 533). The imperial ambassador urged the necessity of executing Lady Jane, but Mary resolutely declined to take the step. Nor would she treat Elizabeth harshly. To many it was obvious that Elizabeth might become the centre of a hostile protestant faction unless she were kept under strict control. But Mary merely appealed to her to adopt the ancient ritual. Elizabeth readily removed one of Mary's difficulties by attending mass, and was accordingly left at peace.
On 12 Aug. Mary left the Tower for Richmond, and soon began preparations for her coronation. It was deemed politic to make it ‘very splendid and glorious’ (Strype). On 4 Sept. she issued two proclamations¾one remitting the taxes voted in Edward VI's last parliament, which caused ‘a marvellous noise of rejoicing’ (Chron. p. 26); the other regulating the coinage which Mary desired to reform after its debasement by her father and brother. On 28 Sept. she removed from St. James's Palace to Whitehall, and proceeded by water to the Tower. Next day she made Edward Courtenay and fourteen others knights of the Bath. On 30 Sept. she returned to Westminster, attended by seventy ladies on horseback, clad in crimson velvet, and five hundred gentlemen, including the foreign ambassadors. The lord mayor carried the sceptre, triumphal arches were erected, and the pageantry was profuse. The conduits at Cornhill and Cheapside ran with wine. At St. Paul's School, John Heywood [q.v.], whom Mary liberally patronised throughout her reign, delivered an oration in Latin and English, while the cathedral choristers played on viols and sang. Next morning, 1 Oct., the queen went to Westminster Abbey by water, resplendent in crimson velvet, minever fur, ribbons of Venetian gold, silk and gold lace. Gardiner conducted the coronation ceremony. The queen at the high altar swore upon the host to observe the coronation oaths. George Day, bishop of Chichester, preached the sermon, and dwelt on the obedience due to kings. (The original records are in the College of Arms, see Planché's Regal Records, 1838, pp. 1-33.). Princess Elizabeth and Anne of Cleves were in attendance on the queen, and at the coronation banquet in Westminster Hall they sat on her left hand, while Gardiner sat on her right. ‘Panegyrici,’ in Latin verse, by John Seton (1553), and a ballad by Richard Beeard [q.v.] called ‘A Godly Psalme of Marye Queene’ (1553), affected to give voice to the national feeling in Mary's favour.
Mary was the first queen regnant in the history of England, and to confirm her position the council deemed it from the first essential that she should marry. Popularly it was reported that the attention she had shown to Courtenay implied that she had fixed her choice on him, and Gardiner was favourable to such a union. But although his name was long mentioned in this connection, Courtenay's dissolute conduct on his release from his long imprisonment soon destroyed his chances. The only other Englishman whose claims to the position of Mary's husband were discussed was Pole, who was still in minor orders. The early affection Mary had manifested for him was not forgotten; but Noailles, the French ambassador, at once announced to his government that Pole's age and infirmity placed him out of the reckoning. It was clear in any case that the proposal did not meet with Pole's approval. Meanwhile, the bolder spirits among Mary's advisers regarded the matrimonial scheme chiefly as a detail of foreign policy, and urged, like their predecessors under Henry VIII, that it was only abroad that a suitor of adequate political importance could be found. There a large choice offered itself. Philip, son of Charles V, the king of Denmark, the infant of Portugal, were all available. Once more Mary appealed for advice to her cousin Charles V. After some hesitation he told her that he was too advanced in years to renew his ancient pretensions to her hand, but his son Philip was ready to become her husband. The proposal flattered Mary. She had never seen Philip, who, born at Valladolid on 21 May 1527, was eleven years her junior, and she knew little of his character. His first wife, Mary of Portugal, whom he had married in 1543, had died in 1546, leaving him one child, Don Carlos, and it was rumoured that he desired a youthful bride. But his reputation as a catholic of almost fanatical piety powerfully recommended him to Mary (cf. Cal. State Papers, Venetian, 1534-54, p. 489). The reestablishment of catholicism needed, she saw, a strong hand, while every counsel of the emperor she had long viewed as law. When the negotiation reached the ears of Gardiner, he remonstrated with Mary on the impolicy of uniting herself with one whose haughty demeanour had excited discontent among his father's subjects in the Low Countries, and had given him a bad name in England. Even Pole at first deemed the scheme dangerous, and openly declared that it would be wiser for Mary to remain single (Charles V consequently contrived to detain Pole in the Low Countries when on his way to England); while Friar Peto prophesied that she would be the slave of a young husband, and could only bring heirs to the crown at the risk of her life (Tytler, ii. 304). But a minority in the council, headed by the Duke of Norfolk, encouraged Mary to accept Philip's offer.
While the question was still in suspense Mary met her first parliament (5 Oct.). To allay apprehension a modest programme was submitted to it. The new treasons, præmunires, and felonies created in the two preceding reigns were abolished. The queen was declared to have been born ‘in a most just and lawfull matrimony;’ the laws concerning religion passed under Edward VI were repealed, and the form of worship used in the last year of Henry VIII restored from the following 20 Dec. After a brief adjournment in November, the two houses set about preparing an address to Mary praying her to marry, and to choose her husband from the English nobility. The last suggestion Mary resented. It impelled her to a decision. The same night as she heard of the intention of her parliament, she sent for Renard, and invited him into her private oratory. She knelt before the altar, and after reciting the hymn ‘Veni Creator Spiritus,’ declared that, under divine guidance, she pledged her faith to Philip, and would marry no one else. This interview was for the time kept secret. When the commons offered to present their address at the close of the session (6 Dec.), she summoned them to Whitehall, and, denying their right to limit her choice of a husband, with much dignity declared her wish to secure by her marriage her people's happiness as well as her own. But immediately afterwards she directed her council to open the final negotiations with the imperial court for her union to Philip.
Early in January 1554 Counts Egmont and de Laing, with two others, landed in Kent, as special ambassadors from the emperor. Reports of the queen's scheme were already abroad, and popular feeling was strongly aroused. The people of Kent, mistaking Egmont for the bridegroom, nearly tore him to pieces on landing, and Courtenay, now created Earl of Devonshire, as he passed through London to meet him at Westminster, was pelted with snowballs (Chron. p. 34). The envoys on their arrival at Westminster were received in public audience by Mary (14 Jan.). She warned them that the realm was her first husband, and she would always be faithful to her coronation pledges. Gardiner had withdrawn his opposition in view of the queen's firmness, and the negotiations proceeded rapidly. The articles were communicated to the lord mayor and the city of London on 15 Jan. 1553-4. Mary and Philip were to bestow on each other the titular dignities of their several kingdoms. The dominions of each were to be governed separately, according to their ancient laws and privileges. None but natives of England were to hold office in the queen's court or government. But Philip was to aid Mary in the government of her kingdom. If the queen had a child, it was to succeed to her dominions, and to the whole inheritance which Philip derived from the dukes of Burgundy, namely, Holland and the rich Flemish provinces. Philip was not to engage England in his father's French wars, and the peace between English and French was to remain inviolate. If the queen died without children, her husband was to make no claim to the succession (Parl. Hist. iii. 304-5).
No sooner were the marriage articles published than three insurrections broke out, and gave practical warning to Mary of the error she was about to commit. The French and Venetian ambassadors, who had protested against the whole scheme, secretly fanned the opposition and encouraged the sentiment that Mary was placing England in subjection to Spain, and that if she persisted in the marriage she must be forced from the throne.
The Duke of Suffolk agitated for the restoration of his daughter, Lady Jane Grey, who was still in prison; Sir Peter Carew rose in arms in Devonshire to set Elizabeth and Courtenay on the throne; but neither of these outbreaks proved serious. Suffolk's rising was quickly suppressed by Lord Huntingdon in a skirmish near Coventry. On 10 Feb. he was brought to the Tower. On 1 Feb. Mary learned that Carew had fled to France. More formidable was the rising in Kent of Sir Thomas Wyatt, a young catholic twenty-three years old. France, it was rumoured, was supporting him, and facts soon proved that all classes in the south-eastern counties sympathised with him. On 26 Jan. troops were hastily despatched from London, under the Duke of Norfolk, who carried a proclamation promising pardon to all who straightway laid down their arms (Chron. p. 38), but the campaign opened badly for the queen. Wyatt marched from Rochester to Deptford with fifteen thousand men, sent demands for the surrender of the persons of the queen and council, and was soon on his way to Southwark. Consternation spread through London, but the crisis gave the queen an opportunity of displaying her personal courage. Just before Wyatt reached Southwark, she rode to the Guildhall (1 Feb.), and addressed the citizens in a speech of remarkable power. ‘I am come,’ she began, ‘in mine own person to tell you what you already see and know. I mean the traitorous and seditious assembling of the Kentish rebels against us and you.’ ‘They pretend,’ she continued, ‘to object to the marriage with the Prince of Spain,’ but she was their queen, bound in concord to her people. As for her intended marriage, unless parliament approved it, she would abstain from it.
Doubtful as to the possibility of entering the city by way of Southwark, Wyatt soon retraced his steps, and crossed the river at Kingston, determined to reach London by way of Hyde Park Corner. Whitehall was thus near his line of march, and Mary was entreated to remove to Windsor, but she declined to leave a post of danger. On 7 Feb. Wyatt arrived at St. James's, within a short distance of the palace. A slight attack was made by a detachment of his troops on the back of it, as the main army passed on its way to the city. The queen, who spent most of her time during the crisis in prayer, is said to have witnessed the rebels' progress from the Gatehouse. But in the city Wyatt and his forces were easily defeated, and he was taken prisoner. As soon as the rebellion was suppressed, Mary agreed to make an example of the ringleaders, although a general pardon was proclaimed in Kent. Sixty persons were publicly hanged in London (Tytler, ii. 309, 346; Chron. p. 59). Lady Jane Grey and her husband were executed under their old sentence on 12 Feb., the Duke of Suffolk on 23 Feb., and Sir Thomas Wyatt, who pleaded guilty, on 11 April. On 12 Feb. Courtenay was again sent to the Tower, on suspicion of complicity in Carew's rising. Renard declared that Elizabeth had encouraged Wyatt, and in his confession Wyatt directly implicated her. She was accordingly arrested and sent to the Tower on 18 March. Gardiner argued that Mary's security could only be purchased by the execution of Elizabeth, but Mary hesitated to proceed to extremities, and listened in much perplexity to hot debates on the subject in her divided council (cf. Tytler, ii. 311, 365 sq., and esp. 422-8). In May Elizabeth was summoned to join Mary at Richmond, and was thence sent to Woodstock under the care of Sir Henry Bedingfield (19 May).
The rebellion spurred Mary into a more vigorous assertion of her religious policy. Protestantism she identified with lawlessness, and she declined to temporise with it further. All foreign congregations were ordered to quit the realm (ib. p. 312). Married clergy were to be expelled from their benefices or separated from their wives. On 21 March the council ordered country gentlemen to set up altars in their village churches within a fortnight on pain of a fine of 100l. (Acts P. C. 1552-4, p. 411, cf. p. 395). At the same time Mary was unwilling to take any action that should lack the appearance of legality, and a printed paper which suggested that she could restore the papal supremacy and the monasteries besides punishing her enemies by her own will was burnt by order of the council. In Rogation week she attended in state the churches of St. Giles's-in-the-Fields, St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, and Westminster Abbey, and was accompanied by four bishops wearing their mitres.
Peace being outwardly restored, the arrangements for the marriage continued. In March Egmont returned as proxy to espouse Mary, bearing a ring of betrothal from Philip and a ratification of the matrimonial treaty from his father. Meeting Egmont and the council in her private oratory, the queen declared that she had no strong desire to marry at all, nor had she chosen Philip on account of his relationship to her. She was solely moved by regard for the honour of her crown and the tranquillity of her kingdom. Before Egmont left, she sent verbally affectionate commendations to Philip, but deferred writing until he wrote to her. Philip soon afterwards despatched Antonio More [q.v.] to England to paint her portrait.
It only remained for Mary to submit the marriage treaty to parliament, which met for the second time in her reign on 2 April, and sat till 5 May. Reference was at once made to the current objections to the marriage, but Gardiner argued that every security had been taken to render Spanish domination over England impossible. The members were satisfied, and formally accepted the marriage contract. But to prevent any confusion respecting Philip's position in England, they passed an act vesting the regal power in the queen as fully as it had ever been vested in a king. On 22 April Mary announced to Philip the confirmation of the contract by her parliament. It was her first letter to him, and was in French. Bills making heresy a penal offence were proposed by the government in the same session, but the lay peers opposed the measures and they were withdrawn.
Doubts were still entertained in the council respecting the prince's exact status in England, and Mary was anxious that all uncertain points should be so determined as to increase Philip's dignity. The imperial ambassador demanded precedence for him and his titles in documents of state. Mary and the council yielded. But when Renard suggested that Philip should be honoured with a ceremony of coronation Gardiner and the council firmly resisted. Mary pleaded in vain that the diadem of the queen-consorts of England might be formally placed on his head. In June she removed to Gardiner's palace, Farnham Castle, near Winchester, in anticipation of the wedding, which was fixed to take place at Winchester in the next month. In the interval she showed a feverish anxiety respecting the arrangements made for Philip's personal safety in England; but her attention was for a while diverted by her sister's affairs. She had allowed Elizabeth a copy of the Bible in English, and had given her permission to write to her. On 13 June Elizabeth forwarded a denial of all complicity with Wyatt. Mary replied in a letter to Bedingfield throwing doubts on Elizabeth's good faith. She emphasised her own clemency, and declined to be further molested by such colourable professions (25 June).
Philip embarked at Corunna for England on 13 July 1554, and landed at Southampton on Friday, 20 July, escorted by English, Dutch, and Spanish ships (cf. Viaje de Felipe Segundo à Inglaterra, ed. Gayangos, Sociedad de Bibliófilos Españoles, 1877, and English Hist. Rev. April 1892, pp. 253 sq.). The Earl of Arundel met him in a barge off the coast, and offered him the order of the Garter. On reaching the shore he accepted as a gift from the queen a Spanish gelding, richly caparisoned. His retinue included Ruy Gomez, Alva, Medina-Celi, the bishop of Cuença, and many other great noblemen of Spain (Tytler, ii. 433). He at once went to Holyrood church, and in the evening received a deputation of the council. Addressing them in Latin (he knew no English), he declared that he had come to live among them as an Englishman. He promised that his own attendants should while in England conform to English law, and finally showed an amiable desire to adopt native customs by drinking the healths of all present in a tankard of English ale. He remained at Southampton till Monday, when he travelled to Winchester, and straightway attended a special service in the cathedral. Earlier in the day the queen had left Farnham, and had, during a severe thunderstorm, made a public entry into the city on her way to the bishop's palace. The Winchester scholars offered her many copies of congratulatory Latin verse (cf. MS. Royal, 12 A. xx), in which the descent, both of herself and Philip, was traced to John of Gaunt. Other panegyrists, including Lodovico Paterno and Hadrianus Junius in his ‘Philippeis’ (London, 1554), dwelt on the same fact. In the evening Philip privately paid the queen a visit. It was their first meeting. They conversed in Spanish (Fabyan, Chron. p. 140). Next day Philip proceeded in state on a second visit to Mary. On Wednesday, 25 July, the marriage was celebrated in the cathedral. Before the ceremony the emperor's envoy, Figueroa, announced that Charles had presented his son with the kingdom of Naples. Bishop Gardiner officiated. The falding-stool on which the queen knelt is still shown in the cathedral. At the wedding banquet, in accordance with Spanish etiquette, the king and queen were alone seated (Tytler, ii. 433). On its conclusion a herald proclaimed the titles of bride and bridegroom thus: ‘Philip and Mary, by the grace of God King and Queen of England, France, Naples, Jerusalem, and Ireland, defenders of the faith, Princes of Spain and Sicily, Archdukes of Austria, Dukes of Milan, Burgundy, and Brabant, Counts of Hapsburg, Flanders, and Tyrol’ (Chron. p. 142; Stow, p. 625). The morning after the marriage Philip and Mary went to Basinghouse, where the Marquis of Winchester gave an elaborate entertainment. Within a week they left Winchester for Windsor Castle, and a long series of wedding festivities followed. On Sunday, 5 Aug., Philip was formally admitted to the order of the Garter. The following fortnight was spent at Richmond. On 28 Aug. they proceeded in state through the city. In the procession figured twenty carts, containing ninety-seven chests of bullion which had been brought over by Philip as a gift, and were valued at 50,000l. (Chron. p. 83). The festivities, which were continued at Whitehall, were interrupted by the deaths of the old Duke of Norfolk, for whom the queen ordered court mourning, and of Don Juan of Portugal, Philip's brother-in-law. Mary and her husband thereupon retired to Hampton Court.
Signs of Philip's unpopularity were making themselves apparent. His followers complained of insults offered them in the streets, and affrays between them and the Londoners were frequent. But his own conduct, largely regulated by Renard's advice, was discreet. His strict attendance to his religious observances and an almost ridiculous formality of manner were alone urged against him by courtiers. On 27 July orders had been issued that the proceedings in council should be reported in Latin or Spanish for his convenience¾a proof of his interest in the domestic government¾and a stamp was ‘made in both their names for the stamping’ of state documents. At an early date, too, he directed coins to be struck for his kingdom of Naples bearing the shields both of himself and Mary and a description of himself as king of England (Hawkins, Medallic Illustrations, 1885, i. 69). But beyond advising Mary to pardon Elizabeth, he is not known to have exerted any direct influence on English politics in the early days of his married life. Late in the autumn Elizabeth was summoned to Hampton Court. The queen invited her to confess her fault. Elizabeth flatly denied her guilt, but the interview terminated amicably, and the queen, placing a costly ring on Elizabeth's finger, formally forgave her. Their friendly relations were not again interrupted.
On 11 Nov. Mary and Philip proceeded on horseback from Whitehall to open parliament, to which the sheriffs had been admonished to return men of ‘a wise, grave, and catholic sort’ (Burnet). A sword of state was carried before each sovereign, and Mary, as was now habitual with her, was very richly attired. The session was to accomplish one of her dearest wishes. The first business was the reversal of Cardinal Pole's attainder. Two days later (14 Nov.) Pole, after his long absence abroad, arrived at Gravesend and was rowed to Westminster in a state barge, at the prow of which a large silver cross, the legatine emblem, was fixed, although he came, it was announced, not as legate but as a special ambassador from the pope. Mary received him with almost childish delight. ‘The day I ascended the throne,’ she said, ‘I did not feel such joy.’ A grand tournament was held in his honour on 25 Nov. Philip was one of the successful combatants, and the queen distributed the prizes. On 27 Nov., owing to her illness, the two houses of parliament were summoned to her presence chamber at Whitehall. Philip sat at Mary's left hand, under the canopy of the throne; Pole sat at some distance from her, on her right. The cardinal, after dwelling on Mary's early struggles and final victory, announced that he had come from the pope to grant England absolution for her past offences. But, in agreement with the recommendations of the queen's council, which she herself had reluctantly accepted, he added that the pope did not require the restitution of church lands. Next morning, after a conference of both houses, a petition from the parliament, praying for reconciliation with Rome, was handed to Mary, who delivered it to the cardinal in another public audience. Thereupon Pole's commission from the pope was read, and he formally granted the kingdom absolution and freedom from all religious censure. Subsequently the queen and the whole company proceeded to St. Stephen's Chapel. Pope Julius III had a medal struck in honour of the event, in which England was represented as a suppliant, with Philip and Mary standing on one side and Charles V and Pole on the other (Hawkins, i. 70).
But other grounds of rejoicing were reported. On the day that Pole absolved the realm, Gardiner, the chancellor, and nine other lords of the council addressed a letter to Bonner, bishop of London, announcing that the queen was ‘conceaved and quicke of childe,’ and directing the ‘Te Deum’ to be sung in all the churches of the London diocese. The letter was printed and published by John Cawood, the royal printer. A solemn service of thanksgiving took place in St. Paul's Cathedral (15 Nov.); the lord mayor and eleven bishops attended. Dr. Weston, dean of Westminster, composed a prayer to be said daily for the queen's safe deliverance, and other prayers expressed the hope that the offspring might be ‘a male child, well favoured and witty.’ A ballad ‘imprinted ¼ by Wyllyam Ryddaell’ declared
How manie good people were longe in dispaire
That this letel England should lacke a righte heire,
and stated that all who showed hostility to the marriage were now reconciled by the joyful tidings (cf. Parker MSS. Coll. Christ Cambr. No. cvi. 630; Gent. Mag. 1841, ii. 597-8; Tytler, ii. 455, 464). Christmas was accordingly celebrated with unusual splendour, and Elizabeth was among the queen's guests. Mary, whose expenses had recently been very large, and whose monetary resources were running low, showed some desire for retrenchment, and Sir Thomas Cawarden, the master of the revels, complained of her economy. But little falling off in the outward splendour of the court was apparent, and by borrowing freely of Flemish merchants, through her agent, Sir Thomas Gresham [q.v.], she was able to postpone disaster (cf. For. Cal. 18 Aug. 1555). On 9 Jan. 1555 she received with much magnificence the Princes of Savoy and Orange.
Meanwhile parliament passed acts confirming the restoration of the papal power. One most important statute repealed ‘all statutes [nineteen in number], articles, and provisions against the see apostolic of Rome since the twentieth year of King Henry VIII.’ Although property that had formerly belonged to the church was not to be restored, papal bulls, dispensations, and privileges not containing matter prejudicial to the royal authority or to the laws of the realm were to be universally recognised (1 & 2 Phil. & Mar. c. 8). Julius and his successor Paul IV, (elected 23 May 1555), actively enforced their newly won power, and forwarded numerous bulls, many of which dealt with the secular affairs of the country. By one Ireland was created a kingdom (Dixon).
At the same time the council successfully recommended to parliament the full revival of the old penal laws against heresy. The responsibility of first making the suggestion has not been clearly allotted. Gardiner and Bonner have both been credited with it on insufficient evidence. Nor can Philip be positively stated to have encouraged the scheme, much less to have initiated it. Cabrera, his official biographer, assumes that he urged it upon Mary, largely on the ground of the support he subsequently accorded to the Spanish inquisition. But Renard, whose counsel he was following at the time, distinctly declared against extreme measures in the treatment of English heretics (Tytler). Mary had hitherto held similar views. By nature she disliked persecution; in suppressing the conspiracies against her she had never exerted all her legal powers of vengeance; she had received the Duchess of Suffolk, the mother of Lady Jane Grey, into her household. Heretics, she said in answer to an appeal from the council, should be punished without rashness; the learned who deceived the people undoubtedly deserved harsh treatment; but serious results might follow if the people believed that their leaders were condemned without just occasion (Collier, Eccl. Hist. ii. 371). On the other hand, she was aware that it was hopeless to expect the voluntary conversion of the protestant leaders. And she was easily persuaded that the removal by death of those whom she regarded as irreclaimable heretics was after all the only possible means of completing her great task. Consequently she consented to the re-enactment of the statute against lollardy which punished heresy at the stake, and to the restoration of the bishops' courts. Some necessary corollaries were accepted. ‘Prophane and schismatical conventicles’ abounded, and their directors were reported to pray for her death. Parliament now at her request made such action equivalent to treason, while to speak or preach openly against the title of king or queen and their issue was made punishable for the first offence by forfeiture of goods and imprisonment for life, and for the second as in a case of treason.
The great persecution which has given Mary her evil reputation was thus set on foot. Henceforth protestants only knew her (in the phrase of John Knox) as ‘that wicked Jezebel of England.’ On 16 Jan. she dissolved her third parliament, which had authorised the disastrous work. Two days later she proclaimed a political amnesty and released those who were imprisoned on account of their complicity with Wyatt. But the first martyr, Rogers, was burned at Smithfield on 4 Feb. 1555. At the same time Saunders, rector of All Hallows, suffered at Coventry, and a few days later Dr. Rowland Taylor at Hadleigh, and Bishop Hooper at Gloucester. All were offered their lives if they abjured protestantism. At the end of the week Alphonso de Castro, a Franciscan friar and Philip's confessor, denounced the burnings in a sermon at court. The queen was impressed by the declaration, and the council issued an order suspending further executions, but at the end of five weeks they were allowed to recommence. In April the justices of the peace were directed to search diligently for heretics, in May they were bidden to act more rigorously, and before the end of the year ninety persons had suffered. Of these only six were burnt at Smithfield.
On 4 April Mary removed to Hampton Court, where arrangements were made for her confinement. On the 30th news reached London that the queen had been delivered of a prince. Bells were rung and bonfires blazed, but next day it was announced that the news was false. In May ambassadors were nominated to carry the tidings to foreign countries as soon as the child was born, and letters in French headed ‘Hampton Court, 1555,’ were written out and addressed to all the sovereigns of Europe, as well as to the doge of Venice, the queens-dowager of Bohemia and Hungary, announcing a child's birth; the word ‘fil’ was so written that it could be by a stroke of the pen converted into ‘filz’ or ‘fille’ (Tytler, ii. 468-9). But no child came, and gradually the rumour spread that the queen was mistaken as to her condition. Foxe asserts, probably falsely, that when one Isabel Malt, a woman dwelling in Horn Alley in Aldersgate Street, was delivered of a boy on 11 June 1555, Lord North and another lord came from the court, and offered to take the child away with a view to representing it as Mary's offspring. On 3 Aug. she left Hampton Court with the king for Oatlands (Machyn, p. 92; Gent. Mag. 1841, pt. ii. pp. 595-9). The theory that Mary's long retirement was a deceit may be rejected. Owing to a disorder which had troubled her since she reached womanhood, Mary at times presented some of the outward aspects of pregnancy, and she thus deluded herself and others. Even before her marriage her appearance had given rise to unfounded suspicions, although doubt is cast on the report that in May 1554 Sussex examined persons resident near Diss, Norfolk, who had spread rumours that the queen was with child.
While Mary was in retirement Philip showed signs of dissatisfaction. He found the queen's temper as uncertain as her health, and his behaviour was (according to rumour) open to serious censure. He made ungentlemanly advances to Magdalen Dacre, one of the queen's attendants, and the affronted lady struck him a sharp blow with a stout staff. His political ambitions were, moreover, increasing; he had lately made vain efforts to obtain the honour of a ceremony of coronation, and he saw the hollowness of the hope which his father cherished of his securing the succession in case of his wife's death. His awkward attempts to personally conciliate the English people had failed. In 1555 there was published a popular tract, ‘A Warninge for Englande, conteyning the horrible practises of the Kynge of Spayne in the Kingdom of Naples ¼ whereby all Englishmen may understand the Plague that may light upon them, iff the Kyng of Spayn obtain the Dominion of England.’ When Mary's delusion became apparent, he resolved, despite Renard's objections, to leave England (Froude, v. 500). He desired, he explained, to visit the other countries under his rule. His father, the emperor, had already ceded Milan to him, in addition to Naples, and was contemplating abdication in all his dominions. Mary viewed his plan with dismay, and he remained with her through August. On the 23rd they arrived at Westminster, and on the 26th the queen was carried in public procession in a litter through the streets to Tower Wharf, where she was joined by Elizabeth. The royal party thence proceeded by water to Greenwich. On the 29th Mary, in great distress, took leave of her husband; her health did not enable her to accompany him to Dover on his journey to Brussels (cf. Forneron, i. 67). Almost all the foreigners at court left for the continent at the same time.
Mary consoled herself in her loneliness by new efforts to complete the restoration of the catholic church. She resolved to make restitution of at least some of the property which her father had transferred from the church to the crown. Philip had deprecated such a course. Her ministers objected that her debts were too heavy and the exchequer too empty to justify it. The dignity of the crown must be supported. But her mind was made up. She set more, she said, by the salvation of her soul than by ten such crowns. She had sent earlier in the year a special embassy (Thirleby, bishop of Ely, Lord Montague, and Sir Edward Carne) to the Vatican, and Sir Edward Carne remained there as her permanent representative. Through him Paul IV urged Mary to press on the measure. On 21 Oct. parliament was summoned to give it effect. Gardiner was ill, and on 12 Nov. he died; his duties were delegated to the Marquis of Winchester, but Mary summoned the lords and commons to Whitehall and personally announced her intentions. The chief bill proposed that the tenths and first-fruits, the rectories, glebe lands, and tithes annexed to the crown since 1528, producing a yearly revenue of about sixty thousand pounds, were to be resigned by the crown, and placed at the disposal of Pole for the augmentation of small livings, the support of preachers, and the furnishing of exhibitions to scholars in the universities; but subject at the same time to all the pensions with which they had been previously encumbered. In the commons the bill encountered considerable opposition, but was carried by a majority of 193 to 126. In the lords it passed with only two dissentient voices. Mary's next step was to re-establish three monasteries¾the Grey Friars at Greenwich, the Carthusians at Sheen, and the Brigittines at Sion; while the dean and prebendaries of Westminster were ordered to retire on pensions to make way for twenty-eight Benedictine monks. The Knights of St. John were also restored, and Sir Thomas Tresham appointed their prior (cf. Machyn, p. 159); and the Hospital of the Savoy was consecrated to charitable purposes, in accordance with the expressed desire of the late king (12 June 1556). Meanwhile parliament confirmed and amended older statutes for the relief of the poor which granted licenses to beggars, and a sort of poor law board was set up at Christ's Hospital to distribute charitable funds (2 Phil. and Mar. c. 5). On 9 Dec. 1555 Mary prorogued both houses at Whitehall (ib. p. 98), and two years elapsed before she met her parliament again.
Mary's health had slightly improved in September 1555, after an Irish physician had suggested a new mode of treatment; but no permanent cure was possible, and the exertion of attending the council soon proved beyond her strength. In great suffering the queen stayed at Greenwich, her favourite palace, at the end of the year. Philip's prolonged absence plunged her into a deep melancholy, and the French ambassador compared her condition to that of Dido, and suggested a similar catastrophe; but he admitted that adversity had long been her daily bread, and she had hitherto met it without flinching. The conspiracy of Sir Henry Dudley, which once more aimed at placing Elizabeth on the throne, and the secret endeavours of the French ambassador to excite feeling against her husband, greatly increased her anxieties. But in her weariness of heart she resisted the persuasion of those about her to identify Elizabeth with her enemies. She was conscious that she was losing her hold upon her subjects, and often spoke bitterly of their ingratitude. It was hinted that her position could only be improved if the pope could be induced to dissolve her marriage.
Philip was closely watching English politics. The council regularly forwarded to him minutes of its proceedings (in Latin), which he returned with elaborate comments (Tytler, ii. 483). Long before his departure he suggested that Elizabeth should marry his friend the Prince of Savoy. At first Mary consented to the plan, provided that Elizabeth agreed to it, but Elizabeth refused consent, and Mary declined to force her unwillingly into a marriage. Philip now urged the scheme anew, and a quarrel between him and Mary was the result. She explained in one letter to Philip that ‘the consent of this realm’ was essential to any marriage scheme for Elizabeth. Philip replied that if parliament proved adverse he should lay the blame on his wife. Mary clearly saw that a marriage which took Elizabeth, her presumptive heir, from England, was impossible, and she finally wrote to Philip with much deference, begging him to delay consideration of the question till he returned to England. Philip's displeasure, she told him, was worse to her than death, and she had already tasted it too much. Philip remained unconvinced, and Mary in her vexation is said to have cut his portrait to pieces.
On another subject king and queen were also at variance. Mary had desired the appointment of Thirleby, bishop of Ely, as chancellor in succession to Gardiner. On Thirleby's rigid determination in dealing with heresy she could rely. But Philip urged her to choose a man of greater moderation, and suggested Lord Paget (Michiel). She declined to select a layman, as contrary to mediæval precedent. A compromise was effected, and Nicholas Heath, archbishop of York, became chancellor on 1 Jan. 1556. Henceforth, however, Mary depended almost wholly on the guidance of Pole, whose culture was greater than his statesmanship. On 22 March 1556 he became archbishop of Canterbury, and on the 28th publicly assumed office as papal legate. Mary's frequent visits to him at Lambeth were the chief source of satisfaction to her in her last years.
Most of 1556 was spent in retirement at Greenwich. She abandoned the customary royal progress in the summer; but on 21 July she went in state from St. James's Palace to Eltham, visiting Pole at Lambeth on the way (Machyn, p. 110). From Eltham she passed to the palace at Croydon, which had been the dower residence of her mother, Catherine, but now belonged to Pole. She is said to have visited the neighbouring cottages, and given money to pay for the education of promising children (Clifford, pp. 64-6), while at home she sought relief from her sorrows in embroidery work. On 19 Sept. she left Croydon for St. James's Palace (Machyn, p. 114). Later in the year Elizabeth spent some weeks with her at Somerset House, and subsequently the queen visited her at Hatfield. On 22 Dec. Mary removed to Greenwich to spend Christmas, and paid another visit to Pole at Lambeth. She had not abandoned hope of Philip's return, and on 15 Feb. 1556-7 she wrote to the barons of the Cinque ports ordering them to hold ships in readiness to escort ‘her dearest lord’ (Green, Letters, iii. 311). A month later her long suspense on Philip's account was over. On 17 March 1557 Lord Robert Dudley brought her the welcome tidings that Philip was at Calais, and on the 20th he was with her at Greenwich. Next day king and queen attended in state a mass in the palace chapel, and orders were issued for the ‘Te Deum’ to be sung in every church in the country. On the 23rd a royal progress through the city followed, with the customary decorations and street mobs. By way of compliment to king and queen, the Earl of Sussex, lord deputy of Ireland, induced the Irish parliament at the same date to give the names of King's County and Queen's County to the districts of Leix and Offaly in Leinster, which had been seized by the crown in the winter of 1556-7 and converted into shires; while the chief town in each district was newly christened Philipstown and Maryborough respectively. Mary's reign left no other permanent mark on Irish history. On 20 March Mary was present at the reinterment of Edward the Confessor's body in Westminster Abbey.
It was not love for Mary that had brought Philip on his second visit to England. Since his departure his father had resigned to him his thrones in the Netherlands and in Spain, and he had renewed the old feud of his house with France. To draw England into his continental quarrel was his immediate purpose. Mary proved compliant, despite the protests of her more prudent ministers, who urged the poverty of the treasury. The outbreak in April of the rebellion of Thomas Stafford, who issued a proclamation designating himself protector of the realm, facilitated Philip's policy. The rebels, it was declared, were in the pay of France. As soon as they were captured, Mary in May issued a proclamation, complaining of ill-usage received by her at the hands of the French king. On 7 June war was declared, and ten days later the Earl of Pembroke left with eight thousand men to join Philip's army in the Low Countries. Philip was satisfied, and in July he prepared to journey to the scene of action. On 2 July he stood godfather to the son of the fourth Duke of Norfolk, afterwards Earl of Arundel [see Howard, Philip]. On the 3rd king and queen slept at Sittingbourne, and next day Philip left Dover for the Low Countries. The queen never saw him again. Philip and his friend the Prince of Savoy won, with his English allies, the battle of St. Quentin (10 Aug.) and Mary sent from Richmond on the 14th an affectionate letter of congratulation to Charles V. She signed herself, ‘Vostre tres humble fille, seur, cousine et perpetuelle allyée’ (Documentos Inéditos, iii. 537-8).
Pole, with characteristic caution, was not in favour of the war. He had in 1555, with Mary's approval, tried to effect a truce between the emperor and the French king, and his negotiations resulted in 1556 in the peace of Vaucelles. He had also urged the pope, when a new breach between Spain and France was imminent, to offer his mediation. But his efforts were resented at Rome. The new pope, Paul IV, a Neapolitan, was no friend of Philip. Nor was he satisfied that Pole had exerted himself to the full in bringing the English people under papal sway. Paul fancied that a stronger hand might effect more, and it might be practicable to reduce Philip's influence over Mary by appointing a new legate more entirely devoted to papal interests, and less under the queen's sway. William Peto, a Friar Observant of Salisbury, was accordingly made a cardinal, and entrusted with legatine authority in England. Pole was summoned to Rome (July 1557). The crisis was a difficult one for the queen, and with many misgivings she threw over the pope. She declared that the new legate would menace the liberties of her people, and ordered all the ports to be closed against him. Pole was directed to remain at his post. On 15 July 1557 Mary dined with him at Lambeth (Machyn, p. 143). In September the pope practically acknowledged his defeat.
Meanwhile the foreign outlook grew more threatening. The Scots had declared war in support of the French in the autumn of 1557, and in the winter the French were marching on Calais. The queen was spurred into unusual activity. Her financial position had become desperate, and she had resorted to many petty and impolitic economies. She had leased the Scilly Isles to a private person, and had sought to reduce the expenses of her foreign office by recalling her envoy, Peter des Vannes, from Venice, and by entrusting English interests there to the care of Philip's Spanish ambassador, Francisco de Vargas. Now, with equal unwisdom, she demanded forced loans under the privy seal (Acts of the Privy Council, 1556-8, pp. 277-304). On 2 Jan. she distributed an appeal to noblemen for reinforcements to be sent to the French coast (Green, iii. 318-19). Three days later Calais surrendered to the Duke of Guise. The arrival of the news plunged Mary into deep despair. Philip offered to aid in the town's recovery, and Mary begged her council to spare no effort to restore to her ‘the chief jewel of our realm.’ But her council pleaded the expense, and nothing was done. In March Philip sent Count de Feria to strengthen her resolution. ‘The queen,’ Feria wrote to his master, ‘does all she can, her will is good and her heart stout, but everything else is wrong’ (For. Cal. 10 March 1558).
On 10 Dec. 1557 Mary had addressed a letter to the sheriffs of the counties, bidding them return to a new parliament representatives who were residents in the constituencies and ‘men given to good order, Catholic, and discreet’ (Green, iii. 315). On 20 Jan. she opened the parliament, after attending mass in Westminster Abbey (Machyn, p. 163). Hostility to the queen's policy at home and abroad found frequent expression during the debates, and after the grant of a subsidy the houses were dissolved (7 March). Easter was spent at Greenwich (Machyn, p. 168), and on 30 April, although her health had improved under the prevailing excitement, she made her will; once again she believed that she was with child. In May she expected another visit from Philip, but he did not come (Green, iii. 319).
A little later she was at Richmond, suffering from intermittent fever, and she soon removed to St. James's Palace in the hope of benefitting by a change of climate. On 17 June 1558 she urged anew the need of defending the realm against ‘our ancient enemies, the French and Scots’ (ib. pp. 320-321). In August she was suffering from low fever and dropsy; she was better in September, but was much distressed by the news of the death of Charles V, and in October the disorder returned while she was still at St. James's Palace. On 28 Oct. she recognised her danger and added a codicil to her will. A few days later Philip, who had been informed of her condition, sent once again the Count de Feria to her with a message and a ring. He recognised the futility of pressing his own claims to her crown, and had already desired her, on Mary Stuart's marriage with the dauphin (24 April 1558), to take steps for the recognition of Elizabeth as her successor. Mary's last days were chiefly occupied in securing the observance of Elizabeth's title. She sent her her jewels, with directions to pay her debts and to maintain the true religion. On 5 Nov. parliament met once more, and it considered a bill¾the first of its kind¾for restricting the liberty of the press; but the queen's illness suspended the proceedings. On 10 Nov. the latest heretics were burnt at Canterbury, nearly bringing the total number of the martyrs to three hundred, and on 12 Nov. a woman was set in the pillory for falsely circulating a report that the queen was dead (Machyn, p. 178). Pole lay on his deathbed at Lambeth at the same time, and hourly messages passed between him and Mary. On 16 Nov. she was composed and cheerful. Early next morning she received extreme unction, and desired that mass should be celebrated in her room. At the elevation of the host she raised her eyes, and as she bowed her head at the benediction, breathed her last (17 Nov.; cf. Clifford, pp. 71-2). Before noon Elizabeth was proclaimed queen. Pole died next day (18 Nov.).
Mary's death¾at the age of forty-two years and nine months¾was probably due to a malignant new growth, the sequel of a long-continued functional disorder of the ovary. Of the functional disorder¾called by Mary and her sister ‘her old guest’¾the chief symptom was amenorrhea (note kindly supplied by Dr. Norman Moore). Mental worry aggravated her ailments; for years she had rarely been free from headache and palpitations of the heart (Venetian Cal. 1553-4, p. 532). But Holinshed states that when Mrs. Rise, a lady-in-waiting, suggested Philip's absence as the sole cause of her sorrow in her last illness, the queen replied, ‘Not only that, but when I am dead and opened you shall find Calais lying upon my heart’ (Chron. iii. 1160; the story reached Holinshed through Mrs. Rise). Mary's body was embalmed, and on 10 Dec. she lay in state in the chapel of St. James's Palace. At her special request she was dressed as a member of a religious order, and not, as was customary, in robes of state. On the 13th the coffin was conveyed in public procession to Westminster Abbey, and on the 14th was buried on the north side of Henry VII's Chapel with full catholic rites. The sermon was preached by John White, bishop of Winchester, who proclaimed Mary as a king's daughter, a king's sister, and a king's wife, and eulogised her clemency and private virtues. A solemn requiem, in memory both of her and of Charles V, was sung by Philip's order in the cathedral of Brussels on the same day. No monument was erected to her memory, but James I ordered two small black tablets to be placed above her grave and that of Elizabeth bearing the inscription, ‘Regno consortes et urna hic obdormimus Elizabetha et Maria sorores in spe resurrectionis.’
By her will, dated 30 April, Mary named Philip and Pole her chief executors. To the former she left a diamond given her by his father, and a diamond, collar of gold, and ruby set in a gold ring, which he had himself given her. To Pole she left 1,000l. She directed her mother's body to be brought from Peterborough and buried beside herself. To the religious houses of Sheen and Sion she left 500l. each and lands to the annual value of 100l.; to the Observant Friars of Greenwich 500l., and to those at Southampton 200l.; to the convent of Black Friars at St. Bartholomew's, four hundred marks; to the nuns of Langley, 200l.; to the abbot and convent of Westminster, 200l.; for the relief of poor scholars at Oxford and Cambridge, 500l.; to the Savoy Hospital lands to the annual value of 500l.; for the foundation of a hospital for poor, old, and invalid soldiers land to the annual value of 400l.; and to her poor servants, 2,000l. In the codicil of 28 Oct. she desired her successor to carry out her bequests, and adjured Philip to maintain peace and amity with England. But neither request proved of any avail, and the provisions of her will were not carried out.
Soon after Mary's death Philip ceased to identify himself with England. In a vague hope that he might yet secure the succession, he at first made an offer to marry Elizabeth, by whom he had always been personally attracted; but he finally replied to her temporising reception of his advances by signing a peace with France, which secured that country in possession of Calais, and by marrying the French king's daughter Isabella (24 June 1559). At the end of the year he left the Netherlands for Spain, and remained there till his death. His third wife died in 1568, leaving him two daughters, and in 1570 he married his niece, Anne of Austria, by whom he was father of his successor, Philip III. Meanwhile his relations with England became openly hostile, and Elizabeth's enemies throughout Europe regarded him as their champion. The revolt of his subjects in the Netherlands excited the sympathy of Englishmen, whose fleets made repeated attacks on his possessions in South America. Philip intrigued with Mary Queen of Scots while Elizabeth's prisoner, and in 1588, after much delay, he formally embarked on war with England, sending forth the Spanish Armada with ruinous results to his prestige. In 1596 his former subjects sacked Cadiz. He died at the Escurial, which he had built in accordance with a vow made on the field of St. Quentin; in September 1598. His religious feeling, always strong, degenerated in his later years into the least attractive form of bigotry.
Mary inherited a high spirit and strong will from both parents, and the early attempts of the enemies of her mother to detach her from her faith only riveted her to it the more closely. Mary's devotion to the catholic religion¾the religion of her mother¾was the central feature of her life and character. Filial piety forbade, in her view, any wavering in her adherence to the pope, who had identified himself with her mother's cause. Similar sentiments underlay her regard for her cousin Charles V, on whose advice she relied in the chief crises of her life. Only half an Englishwoman, she did not recognise the imprudence of identifying herself with her Spanish kinsmen, and to her blindness in that regard must be attributed her marriage¾the great error of her life. That step outraged the national sentiment, and thus gave a colouring of patriotism to the protestant resistance which rendered the success of her religious policy impossible. She never stooped to conciliate popular opinion, and rarely deviated from a course that she had once adopted; but her obvious reluctance to seriously entertain Philip's proposal to marry Elizabeth to Philibert of Savoy indicates that before her death she realised that the country would not tolerate another queen wedded to a foreign prince. A prayer-book said to be hers, now in MS. Sloane 1583, is stained with tears and much handling at the pages which contain the prayers for the unity of the holy catholic church and for the safe delivery of a woman in childbed (f. 15). The fact is an instructive commentary on Mary's last years.
In her domestic policy Mary showed much regard for legal form, although in her later financial measures she violated the spirit of it. She practically obtained parliamentary sanction for every step she took to effect the restoration of catholicism; she refused to support the Savoy marriage scheme on the ground that parliament was averse to it, and she bade her judges administer the laws without fear or favour. In January 1554, when she appointed Morgan chief justice of the common pleas, she addressed him thus: ‘I charge you, sir, to minister the law and justice indifferently without respect of person; and notwithstanding the old error among you which will not admit any witness to speak or other matter be heard in favour of the adversary (the crown being party), it is my pleasure that whatever can be brought in favour of the subject may be admitted and heard. You are to sit there not as advocates for me, but as indifferent judges between me and my people’ (State Trials, i. 72).
Although illness undoubtedly soured Mary's temper, and she was always capable of fits of passion, she treated her servants kindly, was gentle towards children, and was, in accordance with the dictates of her religion, very charitable to the poor. Her ladies-in-waiting were enthusiastic in their devotion to her (cf. Clifford, Life of Jane Dormer). Her zeal for education was no less conspicuous than in the case of her brother and sister. She left money in her will to poor students at Oxford and Cambridge, and during her reign she founded grammar schools at Walsall, Clitheroe, and Leominster (all in 1554), and at Boston and Ripon (in 1555) (cf. Report of Schools Inquiry Commission, 1868, i. App. iv. 47). Fully sensible of the need of maintaining a dignified court, she spent much on pageantry and dress, and delighted in adorning herself with jewellery (Cal. Venetian, 1534-54, p. 533), while she encouraged foreign trade and was the first English sovereign to receive a Russian ambassador. She improved the music in the royal chapel, and was always devoted to the art. Roger Ascham [q.v.], despite his protestantism, she took into her service.
The ferocity with which Mary's personal character has been assailed by protestant writers must be ascribed to religious zeal. According to Foxe, Speed, Strype, and Rapin, she was cruel and vindictive, and delighted in the shedding of innocent blood, thus rendering ‘her reign more bloody’ than that of Diocletian or Richard III. Even Hume, Hallam, and Mr. Froude have largely accepted the verdict of their biassed predecessors. Camden, Fuller, and Godwin, with greater justice, admit that she was pious, merciful by nature, and munificent in charity. The policy of burning protestants, on which the adverse judgment mainly depends, was not lightly adopted. Mary had resolved to bring her people back to the old religion, and it was only when all other means seemed to be failing her that she had recourse to persecution, in the efficacy of which, as an ultimate resort, she had been educated to believe.
Mary had less dignity of bearing than Elizabeth (Puttenham, Poesie, p. 248), but she was a good horsewoman, and practised riding assiduously, on the recommendation of her physicians. She spoke with effect in public. The reports of her beauty in her early years are hardly confirmed by her portraits, which give her either a vacant or a sour-tempered expression; but there is abundant evidence that her contemporaries thought her appearance attractive. Her complexion was good, but one of Philip's attendants declared she had no eyebrows. In middle life illness told on her, and gave her an aspect of age which her years did not warrant. Michiel, the Venetian ambassador, wrote of her in 1557 thus: ‘She is of low stature, but has no deformity in any part of her person. She is thin and delicate ¼ Her features are well formed, and ¼ her looks are of a grave and sedate cast. Her eyes are so piercing as to command not only respect but awe from those on whom she casts them; yet she is very near-sighted, being unable to read, or do anything else without placing her eyes quite close to the object. Her voice is deeptoned and rather masculine, so that when she speaks she is heard some distance off.’
Portraits of Mary are numerous. In her youth Holbein painted her several times. The best example is at Burghley House, and is engraved by Lodge. A sketch by Holbein at Windsor has been engraved by Bartolozzi. The portrait painted by Sir Antonio More and sent to Philip before marriage is in the Prado Gallery at Madrid. An engraving by Vasquez is very rare. A picture containing whole-length portraits of Mary and Philip, also by More, is at Woburn Abbey, and is dated 1558. She also figures in a group of family portraits, including her father, Catherine Parr, and her sister and brother¾now at Hampton Court. Two contemporary prints by Hogenberg were published in 1555; one, bearing her motto, ‘Veritas Temporis Filia,’ displays a very malignant expression. The second is more pleasing.
Sources:
The Life by Miss Strickland gives a good deal of information, but its dates are confusing. It is at present the sole biography of any fulness. The Introduction by Sir Frederic Madden to the Privy Purse Expenses of the Princess Mary (1831) supplies much good material for her early years. But the chief sources, the Letters and Papers of Henry VIII (ed. Brewer and Gairdner), the Domestic State Papers (1547-58), and the three series (Foreign, Spanish, and Venetian) of the Calendars of State Papers, which give the despatches of the Imperial and Venetian ambassadors, with the prefaces of the editors, Father Stevenson, Rawdon Browne, and Major Martin A. S. Hume, largely supplement or supersede all that was written before their publication. The despatches of Michiel (the Venetian ambassador) from 1554 to 1557 have been published in the original Italian by Paul Friedmann, with a valuable preface in French (Venice, 1869). Michiel's despatches, like those of Badoaro, Venetian ambassador to Charles V, are also largely used in Rosso's very rare Historia delle cose occorse nel regno Inghilterra ¼ dopo la morte di Odoardo VI, Venice, 1558 (Bodl. Libr.). Les Ambassades de Messieurs de Noailles en Angleterre, ed. Abbé de Vertot, Leyden, 1763, 5 vols., are invaluable for the French relations. Tytler's History of Edward VI and Queen Mary prints in English many of Renard's letters; others appear in the Papiers d'État de Cardinal Granvelle, published in Les Documents Inédits sur l'Histoire de France. Rawdon Browne's Four Years at the Court of Henry VIII, Brewer's Reign of Henry VIII, Friedmann's Anne Boleyn, and Froude's Divorce of Catherine of Aragon, all mainly based on the official correspondence of ambassadors, give many particulars of Mary's youth down to her mother's death. The Literary Remains of Edward VI (ed. Nichols for Roxburghe Club), the Chronicle of Queen Jane and Queen Mary (Camden Soc.), the long report of Giacomo Soranzo, dated 18 Aug. 1554 (in Venetian Cal. 1534-54, pp. 532-64), and Tytler's History of Edward VI and Queen Mary are useful for the period before and immediately after her accession. Lingard's History supplies on the whole the best account of her reign; Froude's History is less judicial and supplies a very imperfect biography. Foxe, a biassed witness, supplies many documents, and Strype's Memorials and Ecclesiastical Annals are valuable on church matters; but the best account of the religious changes in the reign is in Dixon's Church History, vol. iv. Girolamo Pollini's Historia Ecclesiastica della Rivoluzion d'Inghilterra, Rome, 1594, is of doubtful value. Forneron's Histoire de Philippe II (4 vols.) is the latest biography of Mary's husband. It is fuller than Prescott, and corrects, often with too much bitterness, the elaborate eulogy of Cabrera. A useful bibliography, by Forneron, of the authorities for his reign is in Appendix A to vol. i. For other Spanish original authorities see the index (1891) to the 100 vols. of Documentos Inéditos para la Historia de España, ed. Ferdinand Navarette and others, 1842 sq. In vol. i. 561 sq. is the Viaje de Felipe II, which was re-edited by Señor Gayangos in 1877, with a full bibliography of the numerous works published in Europe in all languages on the subject of Philip's arrival in England; Major Martin A. S. Hume has given a summary of the chief Spanish tracts in Engl. Hist. Rev. vii. (1892) pp. 253 sq. Archdeacon Churton's Spanish Account of the Marian Persecution is in Brit. Mag. 1839-40. The Accession of Queen Mary, being the Contemporary Narrative of Antonio de Guaras, a Spanish Merchant, Resident in London, ed. R. Garnett, LL.D., 1892, is very useful. The published Acts of the Privy Council (ed. J. R. Dasent) reach the year 1558, but do not by any means cover all the subjects dealt with by the council. See also Mrs. Green's Letters of Illustrious Ladies; the Parliamentary History of England; the Chronicles of Hall, Fabyan, Holinshed, and Stow; Machyn's Diary; Wriothesley's Chronicle (Camden Society); Hawkins's Medallic Illustrations of the History of Great Britain, ed. Grueber and Franks, i. 69 sq.; Wiesener's Early Years of Elizabeth (transl. by Yonge); Clifford's Jane Dormer, Duchess of Feria, ed. Stevenson, 1887. Aubrey de Vere and Tennyson have both made Mary the heroine of a tragedy called after her. Philip II is a leading character in both Otway's and Schiller's Don Carlos
Contributor: S. L. [Sidney Lee]
Published: 1893
A genealogical survey of the peerage of Britain as well as the royal families of Europe
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