knowledge that he was determined to confine her as a lunatic, whilst
ruling her kingdom at his will, turned into gloomy misanthropy and
rebellion at her fate at his death; and her refusal to sign the formal
documents presented to her as Queen in the first days of her widowhood,
made evident to the few nobles who kept their heads that some sort of
government would have to be improvised, pending the return of Ferdinand
from Naples. Juan Manuel, fiercely hated by every one, kept in the
background; only hoping to save his life and some of his booty; but the
stern old man in his coarse grey frock, to whom money and possessions
were nothing, though, next to the Pope, he was the richest churchman in
Christendom, Cardinal Jimenez, who perhaps was not taken by surprise by
the opportune disappearance of Philip, had everything ready, even before
the King died, for the establishment of a provisional government; and on
the day of the death a meeting of all the nobles and deputies in Burgos
confirmed the arrangements he had made. All parties of nobles were
represented upon the governing council; but Jimenez himself was
president, and soon became autocrat by right of his ability. Order was
temporarily guaranteed, and all the members, in a self-denying
ordinance, undertook not to try to obtain possession of the Queen or of
her younger son, Ferdinand, who was in Simancas Castle,[116] the elder,
Charles, being in Flanders. Joan, sunk in lethargy, refused to sign the
decrees summoning Cortes; and the latter were irregularly convoked by
the government. But when they were assembled, carefully chosen under
Jimenez’s influence in favour of Ferdinand, Joan would not receive the
members, until, under pressure, she did so only to tell them to go home
and not meddle with government any more without her orders. Thus with a
provisional government, whose mandate expired with the year 1506, a
Queen who refused to rule, and already anarchy and rebellion rife in the
South, Castilians could only pray for the prompt return of King
Ferdinand, who, but a few short weeks before, had been expelled with
every circumstance of insult and ignominy the realm he had ruled so
long.
No entreaty could prevail upon Joan to fulfil any of the duties of
government. Her father would see to everything, she said, when he
returned; all her future work in the world was to pray for the soul of
her husband, and guard his dead body. On Sunday, 19th December 1506,
after mass at the Cartuja, Joan announced her intention of carrying the
body for sepulture in the city of Granada, near the grave of the great
Isabel, in accordance with Philip’s last wish.[117] The steppes of
Castile in the depth of winter are as bleak and inhospitable as any
tract in Europe. For scores of miles over tableland and mountain the
snow lay deep, and the bitter blast swept murderously. The Queen cared
for nothing but the drear burden that she carried upon the richly
bedizened hearse; and with a great train of male servitors, bishops,
churchmen, and choristers, she started on her pilgrimage on the 20th
December.[118] The nights were to be passed in wayside inns or
monasteries, and at each night’s halt the grisly ceremony was gone
through of opening the coffin that the Queen might fondle and kiss the
dead lips and feet of what had been her husband. At one point on the
way, when after nightfall the cortège entered the courtyard of the
stopping place, Joan learnt that, instead of being a monastery for men,
it was a convent of nuns. Instantly her mad jealousy of women flared up,
and she peremptorily ordered the coffin to be carried out of the
precincts. Through the crude winter’s night Joan and her attendants kept
their vigil in the open field over the precious dust of Philip the
Handsome, until daylight enabled them to go again upon their dreary way.
Such experiences as this could not be long continued, for Joan was far
advanced in pregnancy; and when she arrived at Torquemada, only some
thirty miles from her starting-place, the indications of coming labour
warned her that she could go no further; and here, on the 14th January
1507, her youngest child, Katharine, was born.
There is no doubt whatever that Joan was throughout carefully watched by
the agents of her father and Jimenez; and that, although ostensibly a
free agent, any attempt on her part to act independently or enter into a
political combination would have promptly checked. Her mental malady was
certainly not minimised by her father or his agents; who were as anxious
to keep her in confinement now as her husband had been. Nevertheless,
when every deduction has been made, it is indisputable that in her
morbid condition it might have been disastrous to the country to have
allowed her to exercise full political power at this time, even if she
had consented to do so; though if Ferdinand had not been, as he was,
solely moved by his own interests, the unhappy woman might after his
arrival have been associated with him in the government, and have
retained, at least, her personal liberty and ostensible sovereignty.
Jimenez, in the meanwhile, kept his hand firmly on the helm of State.
The great military orders, of which Ferdinand was perpetual Grand
Master, were at his bidding, and enabled him to hold the nobles in
check,[119] as well as the Flemish party, which claimed for the Emperor
Maximilian the regency of Castile as representing the dead King’s son
Charles. The great Cardinal, far stronger than any other man in Spain,
thus kept Castile from anarchy until the arrival of Ferdinand in July
1508. His methods were, of course, arbitrary and unconstitutional; for
the Queen either would not, or was not allowed to, do anything; but, at
least, Jimenez governed in this time of supreme crisis, as he did at a
crisis even more acute on the death of Ferdinand eight years later: and
when Ferdinand eventually came from Naples everything was prepared for
him to govern Castile as he listed for the ends of Aragon.
So far Ferdinand had triumphed both at home and abroad. The death of
Philip made it necessary for Henry of England to change his attitude and
court the friendship of the King of Spain. Katharine of Aragon, the
neglected and shamefully treated widowed Princess of Wales, once more
found her English father-in-law all smiles and amiability. To please him
further she consented to try to bring about a marriage between Henry
VII., recently a widower by the death of Queen Elizabeth of York, and
poor Joan, languishing by her dead husband’s side at Torquemada. The
proposal was a diabolical one; for Joan’s madness and morbid attachment
to her husband’s memory had been everywhere proclaimed from the
housetops: but Katharine of Aragon made no scruple at urging such a
match, in order to improve her own position in England. Ferdinand gently
dallied with the foul proposal. It was a good opportunity for gaining
some concession as to the payment of Katharine’s long overdue dowry,
without which Henry threatened to break off her match with his son and
heir. So Ferdinand wrote in March 1507 from Naples, praying that the
proposal to marry Joan should be kept very secret until he arrived in
Spain, or Joan ‘might do something to prevent it’; but if she ever
married again he promised that it should be to no one but to his good
brother of England.
Whatever may have been Ferdinand’s real intention, and it would appear
very unlikely that he would have permitted so grasping a potentate as
Henry Tudor to gain a footing, as regent or otherwise, in Castile, his
agent in England was quite enamoured of this plan for getting Joan out
of the way in Spain. ‘No king in the world,’ he wrote on the 15th April
1507, ‘would make so good a husband (as Henry VII.) for the Queen of
Castile, whether she be sane or insane. She might recover her reason
when wedded to such a husband; but even in that case King Ferdinand
would, at all events, be sure to retain the Regency of Castile. On the
other hand, if the insanity of the Queen should prove incurable, it
would perhaps be not inconvenient that she should live in England. The
English do not seem to mind her insanity much; especially as it is
asserted that her mental malady will not prevent child-bearing.[120]
Whilst Katharine in England was, as she says, ‘baiting’ Henry VII. for
her own benefit with the tempting morsel of the marriage with Joan, and
the King of France was offering the hand of a French prince, the Queen
of Castile remained in lethargic isolation at Torquemada, though the
plague raged through the summer in the over-crowded village. Joan had
been told by some roguish friar that Philip would come to life again
there, and she obstinately stayed on in the face of danger; saying when
she was urged to go to the neighbouring city of Palencia, where there
was more accommodation, that it was not meet that a widow should be seen
in public, and the only move she would consent to make was to a small
place called Hornillos, a few miles from Torquemada, in April.[121] She
spoke little, and with the exception of listening to music, of which she
was fond, she had no amusement; but it is evident from at least one
incident that, however strange her conduct might be, she was not
deprived entirely of her reason. Jimenez had obtained from her a decree
dismissing all the Councillors appointed by Philip. These favourites of
her husband were naturally furious, and demanded audience of the Queen
at Hornillos. They were received by her in the church where the corpse
of Philip was deposited. ‘Who put you into the Council?’ she asked them.
‘We were appointed by a decree issued and signed by your Highness,’ they
replied. An angry exchange of words then took place, and Joan, turning
to the Marquis of Villena,[122] who was behind her, told him that it was
his smartness that brought such affront as this upon her. Then she
declared in a resolute tone that it was her wish that every one should
return to the office or position he held before she and her husband
landed in Spain; so that when King Ferdinand arrived he should find
everything as it used to be in his time. This, of course, was a victory
for Ferdinand’s party, but it is clear that Joan knew what she was
talking about on this occasion.[123]
At length, in the early autumn of 1507, came the happy news that King
Ferdinand had landed at Valencia; and, accompanied by a large force, was
entering Castile; being generally welcomed by nobles and people.[124] As
soon as Joan learnt that her father had entered her realm, she caused a
_Te Deum_ to be sung in the church of Hornillos, and set forth to
receive him, carrying always the corpse of her husband, and travelling
only by night, as was now her custom. At a small place called Tortoles,
about twenty-five miles beyond Valladolid, father and daughter met. The
King approached, surrounded and followed by great crowds of nobles and
prelates. He was met at the door of the house by Joan, attended by her
half-sister and the Marchioness of Denia; and as he doffed his cap she
threw back the black hood which she wore as a Flemish widow, and bared
the white coif with which her hair was covered. Casting herself upon her
knees she sought to kiss her father’s hand; but he also knelt and
embraced her tenderly; leading her afterwards by the hand into the
house. Every sign of dutiful submission was given by Joan to her father;
and after several long private conferences between them, Ferdinand
announced that she had delegated to him the government of Castile.
[Illustration:
JOAN THE MAD WITH THE UNBURIED BODY OF HER HUSBAND.
_After a Painting by Pradilla._
]
A few days afterwards the whole court moved to another small place,
called Santa Maria del Campo, a few miles nearer Burgos, Joan, as usual,
travelling by night, accompanied by the coffin; and here, at Santa
Maria, the grand anniversary funeral service for Philip was celebrated
(25th September 1507), and Jimenez received the Cardinal’s hat, though
Joan would not allow that joyous ceremony, as she said, to be held in
the church that held her husband’s remains. With infinite trouble
Ferdinand at length persuaded his daughter to accompany him to a larger
town, where more comfort could be obtained, and in early October they
set forth, Ferdinand travelling by day and Joan by night. Suddenly,
however, Joan guessed that they were taking her to Burgos, that dreadful
city where Philip had died. No consideration would induce her to go
another step in that direction; and she took up her residence at Arcos,
a few miles away, whilst Ferdinand established himself at Burgos with
his young French wife, whom Joan received politely.
At Arcos Joan, with her two children, Ferdinand and Katharine, lived her
strange, solitary life for eighteen months, broken only when Ferdinand,
going in July 1508 to reduce Andalusia to order, decided to take his
favourite little grandson and namesake with him. Joan flew into a fury
when she learnt that her child was to be taken from her; and there is no
doubt that the disturbance thus caused aggravated her malady for a time,
although it is said that she forgot the boy in a few days. A curious
idea of her life at Arcos is given in a letter sent on the 9th October
1508 by the Bishop of Malaga, her confessor, to the King. ‘As I wrote
before, since your Highness left, the Queen has been quiet, both in word
and action; and she has not injured or abused any one. I forgot to say
that since then she has not changed her linen, nor dressed her hair, nor
washed her face. They tell me also that she always sleeps on the ground,
as before.’ There follow some medical details, from which the Bishop
draws the conclusion that the Queen would not live long. ‘It is not
meet,’ he says, ‘that she should have the management of her own person,
as she takes so little care of herself. Her lack of cleanliness in her
face, and they say elsewhere, is very great, and she eats with the
plates on the floor, and no napkin. She very often misses hearing mass,
because she is breakfasting at the hour it is celebrated, and there is
no opportunity of her hearing it before noon.’[125]
Before leaving to suppress the revolt in Andalucia, Ferdinand took
effective measures to prevent Joan from being made a tool of faction. He
had tried without success to prevail upon her to remove to the remote
town of Tordesillas, on the river Douro, where there was a commodious
castle-palace fit for her habitation, and the climate was good; but he
posted around Arcos strong forces, commanded by faithful partisans, with
orders that if the Queen at last gave way to the persuasion of her
attendants, and removed to Tordesillas, the troops were to guard her
just as closely and secretly there. But Joan obstinately refused to
move; and Ferdinand found her still there when he returned from the
South in February 1509. Whilst he had been absent, the great magnate in
whose district of Burgos Arcos was situated, the Constable of Castile
(Count de Haro) had been coquetting with the Emperor Maximilian to
displace Ferdinand by his grandson Charles, now nine years old; and the
possession of the person of Joan was of the highest importance.
Ferdinand decided, therefore, that, either willingly or unwillingly,
Joan should be placed where she would be safe from capture by surprise.
When he visited her at Arcos, he found her thin and weak with the cold,
unhealthy climate.[126] ‘Her dress was such as on no account could be
allowed, or is fit even to write about, and everything else looked
similarly, and as if it would be totally impossible for her to go
through another winter if she continued to live in the same way.’
The King stayed with her for some days, without broaching the sore
subject of removing her; but on the 14th February 1509, he had her
aroused at three o’clock in the morning—since he knew she would not
travel in daylight—and told her she must prepare to be gone. She offered
no resistance, but only pleaded for one day to prepare, which was
granted; and she consented to cast away the filthy rags which she had
been wearing, and don proper garments before setting out on the journey
to her new home; carrying her little daughter, Katharine, with her; the
corpse of Philip on its great hearse drawn by four horses, as usual,
leading the way. Although it was evening when she started, great crowds
of people had flocked over from Burgos to see their Queen, who had been
invisible for so long, and was by many thought to be dead.
As the morning sun on the third day was glinting with horizontal rays
the bare brown cornlands that stretch for many miles around Tordesillas
on both sides of the turbid Douro, the wan and weary cavalcade rode over
the ancient bridge. Between the main street and the river stood a
fortress-palace with frowning walls and little windows looking across
the road at the convent of Saint Clara, with its florid Gothic church
and cloisters. Into the palace rode, by her father’s side, with her face
shrouded, Joan, Queen of Castile; and thenceforward, for forty-seven
dreary years, the palace was her prison, until, an old, broken woman of
seventy-six, but wayward and rebellious to the last, she joined her
long-lost husband in the splendid sepulchre in Granada. From the windows
of Joan’s early apartment in the palace, she could see the coffin of
Philip deposited in the convent cloister, and in the first years of her
confinement, she kept her vigil over the corpse in most of her waking
hours, as well as on rare occasions, and closely guarded, attending
commemoratory services in the convent in honour of the dead, until her
undutiful son, the Emperor Charles, either overcoming her resistance, or
perhaps finding the dismal caprice outworn, transferred the mouldering
remains of Philip the Handsome to its last abiding place; whilst Joan
the Mad waited for her release with fierce defiance in her heart, and
revilings on her tongue for all that her oppressors held sacred.
It would not be profitable, even if it were possible, to follow closely
the monotonous life of Joan during her long years of confinement; but,
at certain crises in the political history of her country, her
personality assumed temporary importance, and on these occasions a flood
of light is thrown upon her, which, to some extent, will enable us to
see the reality and extent of her malady, and to judge how far her
laxity in religious observance was the cause of her continued
incarceration. Mr. Bergenroth, in his introduction to the early volumes
of the Calendars of Spanish State Papers, very forcibly urges the view
that Joan was not really mad at all, and that she was sacrificed solely
to the ambition of her husband, her father and her son, in succession.
After carefully considering all the documents adduced by my learned
predecessor as Editor of the Calendars, and many in the Spanish Royal
Academy of History which were unknown to him, I find myself unable to
come to the same conclusion. The separate accounts of her behaviour are
so numerous, and many of them so disinterested, as to leave in my mind
no reasonable doubt that after Philip’s death, whatever may have been
the case before, Joan was not responsible for all her actions. She
appears to have been able on many occasions to discuss complicated
subjects quite rationally, as is not infrequent with people undoubtedly
insane, but her outbursts of rage against religious ceremonies, her
neglect of her person, her persistence for days in refusing food, and
other aberrations, are not only clearly indicative of lunacy, but were
the symptoms repeated exactly in the case of her great-grandson, Don
Carlos, who was undoubtedly insane. At the same time it is clear to see
that there was no reason for keeping her closely confined and isolated
under strong guard, except the dread of Ferdinand, and afterwards of
Charles, that leagues of nobles might make use of her to weaken the
power of the Castilian crown.[127] That this fear was not groundless has
already been shown, and at one point, as will be related presently, the
peril was imminent. That Joan did not seize the opportunity when it was
offered to her after her bitter complaints of her treatment is, in my
view, the best proof that she was not capable of independent rule.
Ferdinand died in January 1516, leaving the whole of his realms to his
grandson Charles in Flanders, in view of Joan’s ‘mental incapacity.’ He
tried almost with his last breath to divide Spain for the benefit of his
younger son, Ferdinand; but was overborne by the remonstrances of his
Council. Jimenez was appointed to be Regent until the new King arrived;
and when Cardinal Adrian, Charles’s ambassador, claimed the Regency in
virtue of a secret authority he produced, Jimenez accepted him as
colleague, but made him a cypher. Up to this period Joan had been under
the care of Ferdinand’s faithful Aragonese friend, Mosen Ferrer, the man
whom rumour accused of having poisoned Philip: whilst her principal lady
in waiting was the Dowager Countess of Salinas. The personal guard of
the Queen was entrusted to the incorruptible _Monteros de Espinosa_, and
there were some companies of Castilians on duty in, and around, the
palace. Mosen Ferrer was hated, especially by the townspeople of
Tordesillas and by the Castilian attendants of Joan, because it was
asserted that he had treated the Queen cruelly, and had not attempted to
cure her. He gave strict orders that Joan should not be told of her
father’s death; but such news could not be hidden, for all Castile was
astir to know what was coming next.
Many of the nobles were around young Ferdinand, and were claiming
Castile for him, in accordance with the old King’s penultimate wish; and
not a few were looking towards Queen Joan. When she first heard the news
she was disturbed to know that Jimenez was not on the spot when the King
died, but was tranquilised to learn that he was on the way, and would
promptly assume the government. No sooner was it known in Tordesillas
that Ferdinand was dead than the townspeople and the Castilian guards
endeavoured to enter the Queen’s apartments and expel Mosen Ferrer: but
the latter and the _Monteros de Espinosa_[128] stood firm, and for weeks
the feud continued. The Guards brought an exorcising priest to cast out
the devils that afflicted the Queen; but Ferrer would not let them enter
the room; though they got into an ante-chamber, where, quite unknown to
the Queen, the exorciser performed his futile incantations through a
hole in the door. As soon as Jimenez had established himself in the
regency, he sent the Bishop of Majorca to set matters right in
Tordesillas. Ferrer, intensely indignant at the accusations against him,
wrote a letter to the Regent, which, being read between the lines, tells
us much. How could he hope to cure the Queen when her own father could
not do so? and how could he be so bad a man as they say, if wise King
Ferdinand entrusted his daughter to his care? This does not seem very
convincing: but when he tries to excuse himself Ferrer makes matters
much worse. It was, he says, only to prevent the Queen from starving
herself to death that he had put her to the torture (_dar cuerda_). He
complains bitterly that though he is not dismissed he is not allowed to
go near the Queen, for fear he should injure her health. Jimenez,
probably recognising that Ferrer had thought more of Aragonese interests
than of the health of Joan, thereupon let him go, and appointed the Duke
of Estrada to be her Keeper.
The first instructions sent by the new King Charles, whose age was
barely sixteen, to the Regent Jimenez concerned Joan. Her custody was so
important, he said, that he agreed, in view of the dissensions amongst
Spaniards, that a Fleming should guard her. Until one was appointed he
directed that ‘whilst she was to be very well treated, she was to be so
closely guarded that if any body should attempt to thwart my good
intentions they may not be able to do it. It is more my duty than that
of any one to care for the honour, contentment, and solace of the Queen;
and if any one else attempts to interfere it will be with an evil
object.’[129] Nevertheless many did attempt to interfere by whispering
doubts to Joan of her Flemish eldest son, in the interests of his young
brother Ferdinand, whom his mother and all Spaniards loved best; and
when in September 1517 one of the _monteros_ approached her and said:
‘Madam, our sovereign lord King Charles, your highness’ son, has arrived
in Spain,’ Joan burst forth in a great rage. ‘I alone am Queen: my son
Charles is but the prince,’ and she always resisted calling him King
thenceforward.
Charles and his sister Leonora came to Tordesillas to see their mother
in December. Charles’s tutor and counsellor, Chièvres, first saw Joan to
break to her the news of the presence of her children; and when,
immediately afterwards, they entered the room and knelt before their
mother, she was overcome with joy to see those whom she had left as
little children twelve years before, now in the best period of
adolescence. When Charles and his sister had retired, Chièvres lost no
time in saying that in order to relieve the Queen, and accustom Charles
to rule, it would be well to entrust the government of Spain to him.
Joan made no great objection to this; but it is clear that her intention
was, that he should administer the government for her and not rule on
his own account as he subsequently did; and when, a few months
afterwards, Charles met the Cortes at Valladolid they would only confirm
his power as joint sovereign, jealous as they were of Flemings, on
condition that he swore that if ever Joan recovered her faculties he
would resign the government to her.[130] Thenceforward Joan, though her
name appeared for years on decrees and proclamations, was politically
dead.
During his stay at Tordesillas, Charles was distressed to see the sad
fate of his young sister, Katharine, now aged eleven. Joan was fiercely
attached to her, and would hardly let her out of her sight. The child’s
rooms were behind those of the Queen, and could only be reached with
Joan’s knowledge; little Katharine’s sole amusement being to look
through a window which had been specially cut for her, and watch the
people going to the opposite church, and the children playing in the
side lane that led to the river, who were encouraged by money to play
there for her amusement. She never left the palace, and was dressed in
mean rags, such as the Queen herself wore, and Charles, knowing that the
Queen would never let the child go willingly, somewhat cruelly planned
to have her kidnapped. He caused a way into her apartment to be broken
through a tapestry-covered wall from an adjoining gallery; and the girl
and her female attendants were carried away at dead of night to a large
force of horsemen and ladies awaiting her on the opposite side of the
bridge across the Douro; and thence spirited away to Valladolid, where,
dressed in fitting splendour, she was lodged in her sister Leonora’s
palace. When, in the morning, Joan discovered her loss, she was
inconsolable. She would neither eat, drink, nor sleep, she said, until
her child was restored to her, and after two days had passed, and she
still stood firm, the King had to be asked what was to be done. He was
loath to give up the education of his sister; for princesses were
valuable dynastic and international assets; but there was no other way
but to send her back. Charles accompanied her to Tordesillas, and made
terms with Joan; the girl must have proper companions and attendants,
she must dress suitably to her rank, and she must be allowed some little
relaxation and liberty outside the palace. To this Joan consented, and
Katharine lived with her until her marriage with the King of Portugal
six years later.
In March 1518, Charles appointed to the custody of the Queen, the
Marquis of Denia, who held her until his death, and was succeeded by his
son. Soon after his appointment, he wrote a letter to the King which
lifts the veil considerably on Joan’s condition. She tried, he says,
persistently and with artful words, remarkable for one in her condition,
to persuade him to take her out of her prison, and to summon the nobles
of Castile, as she was discontented at the way she was being kept out of
the government, and wished to complain. He details the excuses with
which he put her requests aside, and evidently looks upon her
blandishments as wiles to escape; but assures Charles, as he did for
many years afterwards, that ‘nothing should be done against his
interests,’ whatever that may have meant. But even in this letter we see
signs of Joan’s undoubted madness. A day or two before she had thrown
some pitchers at two of her women, and hurt them; and when Denia went
with a grave face to her and said, ‘How is this, my lady? This is a
strange way to treat your servants; your mother treated hers better;’
Joan rose hurriedly, and the very act of her rising sent her servants
scurrying off in a fright. ‘I am not so violent as to do you any
injury,’ she said; and so began again, and for the next five hours, to
try by wheedling to get him to take her out, ‘for she could not bear
these women.’
In reply to this, Charles warned Denia that his conversations with the
Queen must never be overheard by anybody, and that all his letters about
her must be strictly secret. Thus every few days news of his mother
reached the young King, sometimes reporting improvement, sometimes the
reverse; but always harping upon her desire to get out, her dislike of
her woman attendants, and her extreme irregularity in getting up and
eating, which she often did only at intervals of two days. At this time,
too, began to develop her great repugnance to attend mass. The women
seem to have been a great source of trouble to every one. They were, it
appears, always gadding about the town, telling people of what passed in
the palace, and what the Queen said, especially about religion, and her
desire to go out, and to summon the grandees. What was worse, they
defied Denia to dismiss them, until the King gave him full authority
over them, and brought them to reason. In the autumn of the same year,
1518, there was a visitation of plague in the country, though
Tordesillas had not suffered much, owing to the scrupulous care taken to
isolate the place. The removal of the Queen, however, had to be
considered. ‘If it be necessary,’ wrote the Marquis, ‘we shall want
saddle mules with black velvet housings for the Queen and the
Infanta.... It will also be necessary to take the body of the King, your
father, and if this has to be done, we must put into proper order the
car in which it was brought here, as it is now dismantled. Charles was
against any removal if it could possibly be avoided, but if quite
unavoidable, the Queen might be taken to the monastery of St. Paul at
Moralejo, near Arevalo. If she refused to go, she must be taken by
force; but with as much respect as possible, and with every precaution
against her endeavouring to stay in the open on the way. If she wanted
the corpse of Philip to go with her, a dummy coffin might be made up and
carried, whilst the real one with the body remained behind at
Tordesillas.
The plague passed away, and the move was not made; and so things passed
with Joan as before. Squalid and unhappy, she resisted as obstinately as
ever the pressure put upon her to attend mass, though more than once she
was violently desirous of going over in Holy Week, or other
anniversaries, to the convent church of St Clara, and on several
occasions had her clothes washed in preparation for the great event;
which Denia himself was inclined to allow, under strict guard, as people
in the town were tattling about her being kept a prisoner. Great efforts
were made by Juan de Avila, the chaplain, to bring Joan to a better
frame of mind about religion; and in June 1519 he writes a curious
letter to the King, beseeching him to do his duty by his mother;
‘especially for the salvation of her soul.’ Perhaps in answer to this
Charles ordered Denia to insist that the Queen should hear mass. She had
wished it to be said at the end of a corridor, instead of in a special
room adjoining her own, as Denia desired, and, at last, rather than she
should not hear it at all, she was allowed to have her way; and an altar
and chapel were screened off by black velvet hangings at the end of the
corridor. She went through the service with great devotion until the
_evangelium_ and the _pax_ were brought to her, when she refused them,
but motioned that they should be administered to her daughter.
This attendance at mass continued for some time, to the immense
jubilation of Denia and the priests; but as the day approached when
Charles was to leave Spain for Germany to claim the imperial crown, in
consequence of Maximilian’s death (January 1519), the effervescence and
discontent in Castile at the prospect of an absentee King drawing money
from Spain for foreign purposes, penetrated in some mysterious way the
prison-palace of Joan the Mad. For hours the Queen railed at Denia for
not having summoned the Grandees, as she had requested him to do so
often. She was being disgracefully treated, she said; everything
belonged to her, and yet she was being denied what she required. She
excitedly summoned the treasurer, and demanded money of him, which he
was not allowed to give her. So vehement did she become, that at last
Denia forbade any one to speak to her at all. She would go to
Valladolid, she said; and at another time she would dress to go over to
the convent church, though she was not allowed to go. She ordered Denia
to write to her son, asking that she should be better treated; and that
the grandees should come to her to consult about the realm. Denia, at
his wit’s end to pacify her, on one occasion, for, as he says, ‘she uses
words fit to make the very stones rise,’ had the inspiration to mention
her father, as if he were still alive, and at the head of affairs; and
for a time all the disagreeable answers given to her were said to be by
order of King Ferdinand, for whose wisdom she had a great respect. But
this lie gave her a new idea. If her father were alive, he could help
her; and she ordered Denia to write and tell him that she could no
longer stand the life she led. She was badly treated, and as a prisoner,
her son, Ferdinand, had been taken away from her, and she feared they
were going to rob her of her daughter Katharine; but, if they did, she
would kill herself. Denia fell more and more into her black books, as
the discontent at Charles’s departure grew in the country, and echoes
reached the Queen’s prison of the public indignation at her seclusion,
and wild rumours of intentions to rescue her. On one occasion (July
1520) she ordered Denia to open a doorway from her apartments into the
corridor where mass was said. He was suspicious and refused, whereupon
she fell into a violent rage with him, and heaped upon him outrageous
words without measure. No wonder the poor man deplores that everybody
believes he keeps her prisoner (as indeed he did, though he says not),
and he advocates her entire seclusion, although the best way to
undeceive the people, he says, would be to let them see her, and
recognise her sad condition.
Charles sailed from Corunna on 20th May 1520. During the time he had
been in Spain he, or rather his rude, greedy gang of Flemings, had
driven Castilians to desperation. Jimenez, who had held the country for
him in his absence in the face of the nobles and young Ferdinand, had
been contemptuously dismissed—and probably poisoned on Charles’ arrival:
young Ferdinand had been packed off to Flanders: Flemings had crowded
all the great posts, to the exclusion of Spaniards: Joan was not
presented before the Cortes as Queen jointly with her son, as she should
have been; and now, to crown all, the Constitution of Castile had been
violated by the insolent young foreigner who was to rule, not Spain
alone, but half the world. He had held a Castilian Cortes outside the
limits of Castile itself, and had coerced the deputies to vote him large
sums of money to be spent away from Spain. The nobles were already
seething with discontent, and now the people in the towns, who paid all
the taxes, rose and hanged some of the deputies who had voted away their
money for an absent king.
Then, like a well-laid train, all Castile blazed into revolt. It was a
great social, industrial and political struggle, which ended in the
financial impotence of the Cortes of Castile, and the decadence of the
Castilian nobility. The complicated details of the revolt cannot here be
told, but only those points in which Joan was personally concerned. The
governing committee of the revolutionary Comuneros met at Avila at the
end of July 1520, headed by the gentry, and, to some extent, secretly
encouraged by the great nobles. The Flemish Regent, Cardinal Adrian, was
paralysed with dismay at the extent of the rising, and did nothing;
whilst to the cry of ‘Long live the King and Queen: down with evil
ministers,’ every Spanish heart responded. The manifesto published by
the committee announced that the revolutionaries had risen in the
interests of the imprisoned Queen Joan; and early in August a committee
of the council of Castile, the supreme executive body of the Regent’s
government, with its president, Bishop Rojas, presented themselves
before Joan in her palace of Tordesillas, to beg her to sign decrees
against those who were in arms. Joan was to all appearance calm, and
replied to the demand for her signature, ‘It is now fifteen years that I
have been kept from the government and badly treated; and this marquis
here’ (pointing to Denia), ‘is he who has lied to me most.’ Denia,
confused, replied: ‘It is true, my lady, that I have lied to you, but I
have done so to overcome certain prejudices of yours. I may tell you
now, that your father is dead, and I buried him.’ The Queen shed tears
at this, and turning to Rojas, murmured between her sobs, ‘Bishop,
believe me, all that I see and hear is like a dream.’ Rojas pressed his
point. ‘My lady, I can assure you that your signature to these papers
will work a greater miracle than Saint Francis; for, after God, in your
hands now rests the salvation of these realms.’ ‘Rest now,’ replied the
Queen, ‘and come back another day.’
On the morrow the committee of the council saw the Queen again, and as
there was no seat but hers in the room, the president mentioned that it
was not meet that they should be kept standing. ‘Bring a seat for the
council,’ directed the Queen; but, as the attendants were bringing in
chairs, she said, ‘No, no, not chairs, but a bench; that was the rule in
my mother’s time: but the bishop may have a chair.’ After another long
conference the Queen directed the committee to return to Valladolid and
discuss again, in full council the papers to which they requested her
signature; and thus, unsatisfied, the members left her, only to find
themselves prisoners at Valladolid, which was now in the hands of the
rebels, who were rapidly marching upon Tordesillas at the urgent request
of the townspeople of the latter place, to save Queen Joan from being
carried away by the government party.
The rebels had no time to communicate with Joan as to their aims before
they appeared outside the walls of the town on the 29th August. As soon
as Joan learnt of their coming she ordered the townspeople to welcome
them; and so, amidst salute of cannon and enthusiastic cheers, Padilla,
the rebel leader, and his host were escorted into the town, and passed
before the Queen, who stood in a balcony of the palace. After resting
and changing their garments, Padilla and other chiefs sought audience of
the Queen. Joan received him smilingly. ‘Who are you?’ she asked, as he
knelt before her. ‘I am Juan Padilla, my lady,’ he replied, ‘son of the
captain-general of Castile, a servant of Queen Isabel, as I am a servant
of your Highness.’ And then the insurgent chief told the astonished
Queen all that had happened since old King Ferdinand died: how the evil
foreign advisers of young Charles had brought all Spain into revolt, and
that Padilla and the commons of Castile were ready to die in the service
of their own Queen Joan. She expressed her wonderment at all this. She
had been kept a prisoner, she said, for nearly sixteen years, and Denia,
her gaoler, had hidden everything from her. If she had been sure of her
father’s death she would have gone forth and have prevented some of this
trouble in her realm. Then, addressing Padilla, she said: ‘Go now; I
order you to exercise the authority of captain-general of the realm.
Look to all things carefully, until I order otherwise.’
Joan thus made herself the ostensible head of the revolution; and on
many subsequent occasions conferred with the leaders in arms at
Tordesillas, fully approving of their proceedings and aims. She tried to
exonerate Charles on account of his youth and inexperience of Spain, but
clearly indicated her intention to govern for herself in future. Most
important of all, she authorised the leaders to summon the Cortes to
meet at Tordesillas. The weak, foreign Cardinal Regent could only
ascribe Joan’s attitude to her madness; though, as he wrote to Charles,
the people regard it as a proof of her sanity. Denia was now almost a
prisoner, but the revolutionary leaders could never persuade Joan to
sign his formal dismissal, though they, on their own authority, turned
both the marquis and his wife unceremoniously out of the town when
Tordesillas became the centre of the rebel government in September, and
the Cortes held its sittings there.[131]
Joan met her Parliament in the hall of the palace, and listened
patiently to the lengthy harangues of the deputies. In her reply, which
seems to have been extempore, she spoke at great length of her father,
whose death had been concealed from her. During his life she was at
ease, because she knew no one would dare to do harm. But she now saw how
the country and herself had been abused and deceived, to the injury of
the people whom she loved so much. She wished she were in some place
where she could direct affairs better; but as her father had placed her
there, either because of the woman who took her mother’s place, or for
some other reason, she could do no more than she had done. She wondered
that the Spaniards had not avenged themselves before upon the foreigners
who had come with her son. She thought at first that these foreigners
had meant well to her boys; whom they had, she was told, taken back to
Flanders; but she saw differently now, and she hoped no one here had any
evil meaning towards her sons. Even if she were not the Queen she ought
to have been better treated, for, at least, she was the daughter of
great sovereigns; and she was in favour of the Comuneros, because she
saw they were anxious to remedy the abuses of which she complained. All
this seemed quite sane, but at the end of the speech there is a pathetic
ring of self-distrust that tells the sad tale. ‘To the extent of my
power I will see to affairs, either here or elsewhere. But if, whilst I
am here, I cannot do much it will be because I am obliged to spend some
time in calming my heart and strengthening my spirit, on the death of
the King, my husband. But as long as I am in disposition for it, I will
attend to affairs.’[132]
The democratic excesses of the revolutionary Committee, together with
the diplomacy of Charles, were gradually enlisting the great nobles on
the side of the government. Although Joan’s attendants generally were in
her favour, and continued to assert her sanity now they had got rid of
the Denias, her confessor, Juan de Avila, was always secretly faithful
to the Regent; and whispered warnings constantly in the Queen’s ear. It
was evident after a short time also to the revolutionary junta that Joan
was not sane; as they wrote from Tordesillas to the city of Valladolid
saying that they had summoned all the best physicians in Spain to her;
and, apparently finding human aid powerless, they had ordered
processions and prayers for her restoration to health. The Regent,
indeed, writing to Charles in October, says that the Queen cannot last
long if she does not escape from the power of the rebel government; as
she was much worse after Denia went. She no longer sleeps in a bed, he
says, nor eats regularly, but keeps her food all around her cold until
it goes bad. At another time, after she had eaten nothing for three
days, she was given the accumulated food of the whole period at once.
The government party asserted that all the poor woman’s crazy caprices
were acceded to, and even threats resorted to by the junta, in order to
get her to sign the decrees necessary to legitimise their action; but
she continued obstinate in her refusal to put her hand to anything.[133]
The junta began to grow desperate; for the forces against them were
growing daily, whilst they made no progress, depending, as they did, for
legality upon obtaining the signature of a lunatic. They tried to bribe
the poor woman to sign by promising to take her away from Tordesillas;
but that was fruitless: on another occasion, in the middle of the night,
a hue and cry was raised that the Constable of Castile with a great
force of government troops was outside, and the Queen was told that the
‘tyrants’ had come to seize her. ‘Tell the Constable,’ she replied, ‘not
to do anything until the daylight comes; and then I will see about it.’
Things thus went from bad to worse for the rebellion. This was the one
chance of Joan’s life, and she missed it. For months she trifled and
smiled upon the rebel junta, but would sign nothing; and early in
December the government troops were strong enough to make a dash for
Tordesillas, which they took by assault after four hours of desperate
fighting; the rebel junta flying in a panic from the place. Joan
welcomed the victors with a smiling face. She had been expecting and
wishing they would come, she said; and had ordered that the nobles
should be admitted before the fight began.
During the battle she with the Infanta had left the palace, carrying her
jewels with them, and had ordered the corpse of Philip to be taken from
the church and carried with them out of the town. Before it could be
done, in the confusion, the royal troops entered, and they found the
Queen and her daughter crouched in the doorway of the palace trembling
with fright. The great nobles who came to the capture of Tordesillas
were full of lip service to Joan, and she, flattered apparently by their
deference, professed delight at their coming; but from the moment the
rebel junta fled before the Constable’s troops at Tordesillas without
her signature, Joan was a closely watched prisoner. Denia and his wife,
with their harsh methods, came back, to the loudly expressed disgust,
not only of Joan, but of some of the greatest of the Castilian nobles,
who saw how his presence irritated her;[134] but Charles would permit no
change in his mother’s keeper, for he knew he could depend upon Denia to
keep her close.
In April 1521, the Comuneros were finally crushed at the battle of
Villalar, and the yoke of imperialism forged unwittingly by Ferdinand
the Catholic, and open-eyed by Charles the Emperor, was fixed upon the
neck of Spain until it strangled her. Thenceforward Joan was but a
shadow in the world, to which she no longer appertained.
The person most to be pitied, until marriage rescued her in 1524, was
the poor young Infanta Katharine. The Denias came back vowing vengeance
against every one who they thought had been polite to the rebels, and
the Infanta, as well as the Queen, had to feel their petty tyranny. The
girl wrote indignantly to her brother of the wretched straits to which
she was reduced by them, and also of the persecution of her mother by
them. Amongst other complaints, the following may be quoted. ‘For the
love of God, pray order that if the Queen wishes to walk in the gallery
looking on to the river, or in the matted corridor, or to leave her
chamber for pastime, they shall not prevent her from doing so. And pray
do not allow the servants and daughters of the marchioness, or others,
to go to my closet through the Queen’s rooms, but only the persons who
serve; because, in order that the Queen may not see them, the
marchioness orders the women to shut the Queen up in her chamber, and
will not allow her to go into the passages or hall, but keep her in the
chamber where there is no light but candles; for there is nowhere else
for her to go, and she will not leave the chamber until she is dragged
out: or, if she would, the women are there to prevent her.’ This is the
Infanta’s own version; but the Denias’ story is that the young princess
is not allowed by her mother to see any one but a common servant, and
has not the fit company of ladies. To make matters worse for the girl
the Denias accused her of favouring the rebels, which she indignantly
denied, and made peace successfully with her brother. Her departure from
Tordesillas for her marriage afflicted Joan greatly, and for the rest of
the Queen’s life there was no one to stand between the emperor and her
gaolers.
During the long years of Joan’s seclusion, the principal feature of her
aberration was its anti-religious tendency. It is true that she often
demanded the summoning of the nobles, and continued her eccentricity in
eating and sleeping, but the strange antipathy she showed, and often
violently expressed, to the services of her church, was a scandal worse
than any in a country where thousands of people were being burnt for a
tenth part of what the Queen allowed herself to say and do. The whole of
the emperor’s system was based upon the enforcement of universal
religious orthodoxy by Spain: and it was a bitter affliction for him to
know that his mother, and rightful Queen, was madly opposed, at
intervals, to the ceremonies imposed upon the rest of Spaniards. Denia
in his letters to the Emperor, on several occasions, drops dark hints
that torture should be applied—as it evidently had been applied to Joan
years before by Mosen Ferrer. Speaking of her obstinacy soon after the
rebel defeat, and advising that she should be transferred to the
fortress of Arevalo, which he thought safer and more loyal to Charles,
he says: ‘Your Majesty may be sure that this will not be done with the
Queen’s goodwill, for it is not to be expected that a person who refuses
to do anything beneficial, either for her body or her soul, but does
quite the contrary, will agree to this. And, in good truth, if your
Majesty would use pressure[135] upon her in many things, you would serve
God and benefit her Highness, for people in her condition really need
it. Your grandmother, Queen Isabel, served her Highness, her daughter,
in this way, but your Majesty will do as you think best.’
Denia, whilst recommending the employment of force for the removal of
the Queen, did not wish to appear personally as the instrument, but
recommended that the President of the Council of Castile should be sent
with the Emperor’s order for her to submit, and if she resisted, to have
her seized and put into a litter by force in the night time, and carried
off. The removal of the Queen, often urged by Denia for years, on the
ground of the accessibility of Tordesillas to disaffected people, does
not seem ever to have taken place.[136] Denia’s desire to lodge Joan in
a strong isolated fortress is also explained by him on the ground of the
scandal caused by the Queen’s religious attitude. In the letter just
quoted, where he recommends torture, he relates that on Christmas night,
whilst early matins were being sung in the presence of the Infanta, the
Queen came in search of her daughter, and screamed out in anger for them
to clear the altar of everything upon it; and she had to be forcibly
taken back to her rooms. He relates also that: ‘She often goes into the
gallery overlooking the river, and calls to any one she sees to summon
the troops to kill each other. Your majesty may judge from all this what
is best to do, and what we have to put up with.’
These hints at personal punishment of the Queen are repeated again and
again over a series of years by Denia, though, so far as can be gathered
from the Emperor’s replies, he gave no instructions for it to be done.
In 1525 Denia writes: ‘Nothing would do so much good as some pressure
(_i.e._, punishment or torture), although it is a very serious thing for
a subject to think of applying such to his Sovereign. Perhaps it will be
best to try what effect a good priest would have upon Her Highness ... a
Dominican would be best, as she does not like Franciscans.’ On another
occasion soon afterwards, when Charles had decided to have his mother
secretly carried by night to the impregnable castle of Toro, not far
from Tordesillas, Denia remarks that he had taken measures that no
persons should be in the streets to witness her arrival, ‘for, in good
truth, I myself am ashamed of what I hear and see.’
And so from year to year the Queen’s religious aberrations consigned her
to constantly increased seclusion to avoid scandal. The Emperor and his
only son Philip visited the Queen at least on one occasion at
Tordesillas, and during the regency of Philip in 1552, whilst Charles
was in Germany, the Prince, much more rigidly devout even than his
father, and shocked at the continued refusal of his grandmother to
attend the services of the Church and fulfil her religious duties, sent
to Tordesillas the saintly Jesuit Francis of Borgia, Duke of Gandia, to
exert his influence upon the Queen. His success was very small. For
weeks Joan refused to conform, until, at last Borgia persuaded her to
make what is called a ‘general confession,’ and he thereupon gave her
absolution;[137] but directly he left she relapsed into her former
indifference again.
When Philip was leaving Spain to marry Mary, Queen of England, in 1554,
he sent Father Borgia again to try to bring Joan to her religious
duties. She heard the good father patiently, and when he had finished
his exhortations, she endeavoured to make terms. Yes, she would hear
mass, and confess, and receive absolution, and the rest of it, if the
women attendants upon her were sent away, as they always mocked her
whilst she was at her devotions. ‘If that be so,’ replied Father Borgia,
‘the Inquisition shall deal with them as heretics;’ and he at once wrote
to Philip recommending that they should pretend to hand the women over
to the Holy Office, place crosses and images of saints about the Queen’s
rooms, say daily mass on the corridor altar, and if the Queen objected,
tell her that it was done by the order of the Inquisition. He also
proposed to bring some priestly exorcisers to cast out the devils that
afflicted the Queen; but this Philip would not allow. The effect of
Borgia’s efforts on this occasion was, that when Prince Philip on his
way to Corunna to sail for England called at Tordesillas, he found Joan
to his delight going through the ordinary religious rites without
resistance. But her devotion was clearly only on the surface, and her
new confessor Friar Luis de la Cruz, soon reported that he dared not
expose himself to the peril of committing a grave act of sacrilege by
administering the sacraments to the Queen, and resigned his office. It
appears, amongst other things, that she always shut her eyes at the
elevation of the Host at the mass, and on one occasion she violently
told her attendants to throw away the blessed tapers they carried before
her, as she said they stank.
Since the summer of 1553, Joan, then an old woman, had suffered from
swelling of the lower limbs, which almost crippled her; and in February
1555, after a bath of very hot water, the legs broke out into open
wounds. Thenceforward the course of her illness presented an
extraordinary resemblance to that which proved mortal in the case of her
grandson, Philip II. Dreadful gangrenous sores, which she refused to
have dressed or washed, caused her the most awful torment. She paid no
heed to the directions of doctors or nurses; and when her
grand-daughter, the Infanta Joan, came over from Valladolid with the
best medical men procurable, the Queen violently refused to see them or
allow them to examine her. Thus, lying in repulsive squalor and filth,
the poor creature was told that Father Borgia had come to see her. She
angrily refused to listen to him at first, but she was weak, and his
persistence seems finally to have conquered. By and bye she admitted
that she was sorry for her errors, and deplored the divagations of her
spirit. At the request of Borgia she repeated the apostle’s creed and
confessed; but just as he was about to administer the _viaticum_, she
expressed some scruple at receiving it. Learned theologians were
summoned in haste from Salamanca; and a few days afterwards, on the 11th
April 1555, the famous Dr. Soto was closeted with her for hours. His
report was that, though she had privately told him things that consoled
him, the Queen was not fit to receive the Eucharist; though extreme
unction might be administered.
That same night the last rites were performed. Leaning over the dying
woman with a crucifix, the priest told her that the last hour for her
was come, and that it behoved her to ask God for pardon. By signs and
gestures of grief and contrition, she expressed what her poor palsied
tongue refused to utter; and Father Borgia, believing her beyond speech,
asked her to signify whether he should recite the creed for her. To the
astonishment of every one she suddenly recovered her power of utterance,
and replied, ‘You begin it, and I will repeat it after you.’ When the
last amen was said, the saintly Jesuit placed a crucifix to the lips of
the dying woman. ‘Christ crucified aid me,’ she had strength yet to say,
and then Joan the Mad passed to the land where all are sane. For twenty
years her body lay in the Convent of St. Clara, opposite her prison
palace; upon the same spot where the coffin of her husband had rested
for so many years; and then, in 1574, she was carried at last to the
sumptuous tomb at Granada, to join for the rest of time the dust of him
that she had loved not wisely but too well.
The foregoing account of the life of this most unfortunate of queens,
gathered entirely from the contemporary statements of persons who knew
her, tends irresistibly to the conclusion that her early rigid training,
followed by her life in Flanders, had implanted in her mind a dislike of
the stern bigotry which characterised the religion of Spain under the
influence of the Inquisition; and that this dislike grew to hatred when
her mind became permanently unsettled. Her strict seclusion and cruel
treatment do not appear to have been so necessary for her own health, or
even primarily for the public welfare, as for the interests of her
father and son, whose autocratic power was threatened by any combination
of nobles acting in her name, and whose policy largely depended upon the
maintenance of strict religious orthodoxy. To leave at liberty and
accessible a feeble-minded Queen who desired to govern through the
nobles, and hated the religion of the Inquisition, would have been to
invite disaster to the very basis upon which the vast edifice of Spanish
autocratic power at its grandest was erected. It might have been better
for Spain in the long run, but it would have been ruin for Ferdinand and
Charles; and to their interests successively Joan the Mad was
sacrificed.
BOOK III
I
MARY TUDOR
QUEEN OF ENGLAND AND SPAIN
In the noble gallery at the Prado there hangs the full-length seated
portrait of a lady of peculiarly modern aspect, painted by Titian from
sketches and descriptions in his extreme old age.[138] Her sad, sweet
smile, vague, lymphatic eyes, and high prominent forehead, give to the
face a character of far away ideality, such as marked so many of the
members of her house: for this is Isabel, the consort of the Emperor,
and she, like the greater Isabel’s mother, belonged to the fated royal
family of Portugal, whose tainted blood so often carried to its
possessors the mysticism that degenerates into madness. Throughout the
poor lady’s life of barely thirty-six years, she was overshadowed by the
tremendous responsibility of being the mother of the Cæsar’s children.
During the long and frequent absences from Spain of Charles V. in his
life-struggle against France and heresy on the one side, and the powers
of Islam on the other, the Empress Isabel, as Regent, controlled by a
council mainly of churchmen, had to squeeze funds for the imperial wars
from the commons of Castile, well nigh crushed into financial impotence
since the defeat of the parliamentary champions at Villalar.
Like all those who came into immediate contact with Charles in his
imperial capacity, his wife was humbly subordinate to the overwhelming
magnitude of the policy which he directed, and she had no share in
moulding events. For her the glory was sufficient to have borne her
husband a son who lived, besides daughters and two boys who died of
epilepsy in infancy. The mother of Philip of Spain looked with
reverential awe upon her own child, so great and important to mankind
was held to be the inheritance to which he was to succeed; and when she
flickered out of life in 1539, the boy of twelve was her main
contribution and justification to a world which had only known her as
Cæsar’s wife, and only remembered her as Philip’s mother.
In the atmosphere of hushed reverence and rigid sacrifice to imperial
ends that filled the monastic court of Spain in the absence of the
Emperor, Philip was never allowed to forget for an hour the destiny,
with all its duties, its responsibilities, and its power, for which he
was taught that God had specially selected him as son of his father. As
a boy regent in the Emperor’s first great trial of strength with the
German Lutherans, his heart had ached at the sufferings of Spain from
the cruel drain of blood and treasure for the war in which she had no
direct concern; but when he dared, almost passionately, to remonstrate
with his father at the ruin which he himself was forced to impose upon
the people he loved, he was coldly reminded that it was the cause of God
that he and his were fighting, and all earthly considerations must be
sacrificed for its triumph. Philip was the son of his forbears, and he
learnt his lesson well. Like his grandmother Isabel, he had no love of
cruelty for its own sake, but like her he held the mystic belief that he
and the Most High were linked in community of cause, and that the
greater the suffering the greater the glory. He never spared himself or
others when the cause for which he lived, the unification of the faith,
demanded sacrifice; but fate was cruel in the era she chose for him. The
age when Charles and his son were pledged to force all men to take their
faith unquestioned from Rome at the tips of Spanish pikes was that in
which the rebellious Monk of Wittemburg had challenged Rome itself, and
the world was throbbing with the new revelation, that beyond the
trappings that man had hung upon the church, there was a God to whom all
were equal, and to whom all might appeal direct.
So, throughout the century of strife, both Charles and his son, rigid as
they were, were always obliged to conciliate England, whatever its faith
might be; for France, and heresy in their own dominions, were ever the
nearest enemies; and for England permanently to have thrown in its lot
with either of them would have consigned Spain to impotence. Henry VIII.
might defy the Pope, despoil the Church, and insultingly repudiate his
blameless Spanish wife, but the Emperor dared not quarrel with him for
long together, or provoke him too far. But, withal, it was a hard trial
for the champion of orthodoxy to have to speak fair and softly to his
heterodox, excommunicated uncle, and welcome alliance with the power
that was a standing negation of the cause for which he lived. Still
harder was it when Henry was dead; for his personal prestige was great,
and his professions of orthodoxy were emphatic, apart from his personal
quarrel with the Papacy. But to him there succeeded a child-king ruled
by men of small ability, determined to alter the faith of England
itself, and make a durable friendship with Spain impossible.
Then almost suddenly the whole aspect of affairs changed. It had been
known for some time that the young King of England, Edward VI., was
failing, and would probably die without issue; but the uncertain element
had been the extent of the Duke of Northumberland’s power and the
strength of English Protestantism. Edward VI. died on the 7th July 1553,
and the undignified collapse of Northumberland at once decided the
Emperor’s plans. The treachery of Maurice of Saxony had brought Charles
to the humiliating peace of Passau, and had made for ever impossible the
realisation of the great dream of making Philip Emperor as well as King.
It was the heaviest blow that Charles had ever suffered; and, if he
could have appreciated its significance, he would have seen that it
proved the impossibility of the task he had undertaken. He was still at
war with the enemy, France, who had supported his Lutheran princes, and
he was burning to avenge the crowning disaster of Metz, when the death
of the boy King of England opened to his mind’s eye the gates of a
shining future. The hollow crown of the Empire might go, with its poor
patrimony and its turbulent Lutheran subjects, the fat Portuguese dowry
he coveted for his son Philip might be cheerfully sacrificed; but if
only rich England could be joined in lasting bonds to Spain, then France
would indeed be in the toils, Flanders and Italy safe, the road to
unlimited expansion in the East open, and Spain, supreme, might give
laws to Latin Christendom, and to heathendom beyond. The prize was worth
bidding for, and Charles lost no time.
* * * * *
In the brilliant summer weather of late July in 1553, a faded little
woman with a white pinched face, no eyebrows, and russet hair, rode in a
blaze of triumph through the green-bordered roads of Suffolk and Essex
towards London. Around her thronged a thousand gentlemen in velvet
doublets and gold chains, whilst a great force of armed men followed to
support if need be the right of Mary Queen of England. It was not much
more than a fortnight since her brother had died, but into that time the
poignant emotions of a century had been crammed. The traitors who had
proclaimed Queen Jane had tumbled over each other to be the first to
betray some of their companions, and all to disown the despotic craven
who had led them, the wretched Northumberland; Protestant London, even,
had greeted with frantic joy the name of the Catholic Queen, whose right
it knew, and whose unmerited sufferings it pitied; but at thirty-seven,
an old maid, disillusioned and wearied by years of cruel injustice, Mary
Tudor came to her heritage resigned rather than elated.
Amongst the crowds of officials and gentlemen who rode out of London to
pay homage to the new Queen, were two men, each pledged to outwit the
other in his quest. They were of similar age, about fifty, both
Frenchmen, though one was born in the Burgundian territory of the
Franche Comté, and both were ambassadors; one, Simon Renard,
representing the Emperor, and the other, Antoine de Noailles, the King
of France, and they went racing towards Chelmsford, each to try to win
Queen Mary to the side of his master. Noailles was the more courtly and
aristocratic; and his insinuating grace made him a dangerous rival, for
it hid a spirit that stopped at no falsity or treachery if it would
serve his turn. But in gaining Mary Tudor he was fatally handicapped,
though when she received him at New Hall she spoke so fairly that he
thought he had succeeded.[139] For Simon Renard represented the power
that throughout all the bitter trials of her life Mary had looked to as
her only friend. Again and again the imperial ambassadors alone had
dared to claim better treatment for her and her outraged mother; and had
threatened her father with vengeance if ill befell her; whilst France
had always taken the opposite side, and egged King Henry on to work his
own will in despite of Spain and the empire. So, though Mary was
diplomatic to Noailles she was friendly to Renard, for to him and his
master she looked to keep secure her trembling throne.
Already it was seen that the Queen must marry. She had been betrothed
times out of number as an instrument of policy, but of her own will she
desired no husband; and when Renard, in a long private chat with her at
New Hall on the 1st August, broached the subject, she told him that she
knew her duty in that respect and would do it, but prayed for the
guidance of the Emperor in her choice of a husband. She was no longer
young, she said, and hoped that too youthful a husband would not be
recommended to her. Renard knew that already English people had chosen
as the Queen’s prospective bridegroom young Courtenay, still in the
Tower as a prisoner; and that failing him, some had thought of Cardinal
Pole; but he knew well, as did the Emperor, that Mary was too proud to
marry a subject, and looked to her marriage as a means of strengthening
her throne; and soon afterwards even Noailles saw that Courtenay had
spoilt his chance by dissoluteness of life, though he continued to make
use of him as a tool for conspiracy against Mary and her Spanish
friends.
On the 3rd August the new Queen, dressed in violet velvet, and mounted
on a milk-white pony, came to her city of London through the gaily
decked portal of Aldgate, and so to the Tower, where she released those
who had lain there in prison to suit the policy of the men who had ruled
Edward VI. Events moved apace. Gardiner from a prison was suddenly
raised to the post of chief minister. Bonner, the hated Bishop of
London, came from the Marshalsea to his throne in Saint Paul’s; and
everywhere, though yet illegal, the mass was already being introduced.
The Emperor kept warning Mary to be moderate, and to walk warily; whilst
the churchmen, burning with zeal to come upon their own again, were
obstinately shutting their eyes to all that had happened since bluff
Henry’s death. Renard it was who almost daily saw the Queen with these
messages of modern counsel from his master; and the subject of marriage
was mentioned more than once. Noailles and Gardiner were pushing as hard
as they might the suit of Courtenay; but on the 7th August Mary told
Renard that she saw no fit match for her in her own country, and had
decided to marry a foreigner.
Then gently and tentatively the ambassador mentioned the Emperor’s only
son Philip. She affected to laugh at the idea, for the Prince was only
twenty-seven—the same age as Courtenay, by the way—and, as she said on
another occasion, most of the bridegrooms they offered her might have
been her sons. But Renard saw that his suggestion was not altogether an
unwelcome one, and hastened to ask his master for further instructions.
‘Do not overpress her,’ wrote Granvelle, ‘to divert her from any other
match; because if she have the whim she will carry it forward if she be
like other women.’ But Mary Tudor’s birth and trials had made her not
like other women; and she listened to the tale of marriage, not because
she hankered for a husband, but because she hungered for a son to
present to her people.
Noailles soon got wind of the plan to marry Mary to the Emperor’s son,
and wherever French gold or interest could reach the enemies of the new
regime they were plied with hints of the terrible results that would
come if Spain ruled England by Torquemada’s methods. A gust of panic
swept over London at the idea of an Inquisition; for the Queen had come
at first with promises of toleration, and already the zeal of the
churchmen had darkened the horizon. On the eve of the Queen’s
coronation, on the 1st October, a Spanish resident in London, whilst
professing to despair of the probability of the match, writes words that
show how well aware even private citizens were of the advantage that it
would bring to Spain. ‘And if the Lord vouchsafed us to behold this
glorious day, what great advantage would befall our Spain, by holding
the Frenchmen in check, by the union of these kingdoms with his Majesty.
And if it were only to preserve Flanders his Majesty and his son must
greatly desire it, ... for when the Lord shall call his Majesty away the
Low Countries will be in peril of the Frenchmen attacking them, or of
the Germans (_i.e._, Lutherans) invading them by their help, the succour
from Spain being so remote, and the people (_i.e._, of Flanders) not
being well affected towards our nation. It would also be most
advantageous to Spain, because if aught should happen to the Prince’s
son (_i.e._, Don Carlos) the son born here would be King of both
countries, and, in sooth, this would be advantageous to the English
also.’[140]
We may be sure that Mary’s coyly sympathetic attitude was not lost on
the Emperor. But Philip was a man of twenty-seven, a widower since his
boyhood, with a mistress (Isabel de Osorio) whom he loved; and for many
years past he had been his own master, and practically King of Spain,
though nominally only Prince Regent. His marriage, moreover, to a
Portuguese cousin with a rich dowry was in active final negotiation, and
the Emperor could not be sure how the Prince would receive the
suggestion of marriage with an unattractive foreign woman more than ten
years his senior, and living in a far country. He need have had no
distrust. Philip under his system had been brought up from his birth to
regard sacrifice to his mission as a supreme duty. He was a statesman
and a patriot, and he saw as clearly as his father the increment of
strength that the union with England would bring to the cause to which
their lives were pledged; and his reply, given, as Sandoval says, ‘like
a second Isaac ready to sacrifice himself to his father’s will and for
the good of the church,’ was, ‘I have no other will than that of your
Majesty, and whatever you desire, that will I do.’
Promptly on the heels of the courier that bore the dutiful letter to the
Emperor went two nobles of Philip’s household, Don Diego Hurtado de
Mendoza and Don Diego de Geneda, to offer congratulations and greetings
to the new Queen of England in his name. Geneda bore a secret message to
her of a warmer character than mere greeting; and before the sumptuous
coronation in Westminster Abbey on the 1st October, Mary had practically
made up her mind to marry her second cousin. She knew that England,
under Noailles’ artful incitement, was in a ferment of alarm at the
idea; but she was a Tudor; she had some long scores to settle, she
needed strength to do it, and opposition only made her firmer.
Parliament met on the 5th October, and, under pressure from Mary, made a
clean sweep of all the anti-Papal laws that had severed England from
Rome; but when, influenced by Gardiner and prompted by Noailles, the
House of Commons voted an address to the Queen praying her not to marry
a foreigner, Mary sent for the members to wait upon her. The Speaker and
a deputation of twenty parliament men stood trembling before her and
presented their humble address, whilst the angry Queen muttered that she
would be a match for Chancellor Gardiner’s cunning. Her reply to the
Speaker was haughty and minatory: ‘Your desire to dictate to us the
Consort whom we shall choose we consider somewhat superfluous. The
English parliament has not been wont to use such language to its
sovereigns, and when private persons on such matters suit their own
tastes, sovereigns may reasonably be allowed to choose whom they
prefer.’[141] This was the true Tudor way of dealing with the Commons,
and Mary having obtained the religious legislation she needed to
legalise her own position on the throne, promptly dissolved the
parliament she had flouted.
It was only after much prayerful heart-searching that Mary had so far
made up her mind to prefer the Prince of Spain. At first she had tried
to make it a condition that the Emperor should not ask her to marry any
candidate before she had seen him; but this in Philip’s case was
impossible. He was too great a catch to be trotted out for inspection
and approval, and when this was gently put to her by Renard, she
tearfully implored the ambassador, whose hands she seized and held
between her own, not to deceive her with regard to the Prince’s
character. Was he really well conducted and discreet, as he had been
described to her? The ambassador emphatically protested on his honour
that he was; but still the Queen, almost doubting still, wished that she
might see him before she gave her word. A good portrait by Titian was
sent to her, representing the Prince rather younger than he was, a
good-looking young man with the fair Austrian skin and yellow hair, the
slight curly beard hardly masking the heavy jaw and underlip he
inherited from his father. The portrait appears to have banished the
last doubts in Mary’s mind. She had never had a love affair before,
often as she had been betrothed: even now her idea had been to marry
because her position entailed it. But the contemplation of the face of
him who was to be her husband, and Renard’s reiteration of his good
qualities, gradually worked in her mind an intense yearning for the
affection for which she had hungered in vain during her persecuted
youth.
On Sunday evening, the 31st October, she summoned Renard to a room
containing an altar upon which the monstrance with the Host was placed.
The Queen was alone, except for her devoted nurse Mrs. Clarencius, when
the ambassador entered; and with much emotion she told him that since he
had presented the Emperor’s letter asking her hand for Philip, she had
been sleepless, passing her time in weeping and prayers for guidance as
to her choice of a husband. ‘The Holy Sacrament is my resource in all my
difficulties,’ she said, ‘and as it is standing upon the altar in this
room, I will appeal to it for counsel now;’ and, kneeling, as did Renard
and Clarencius, she recited _Veni Creator Spiritus_ almost below her
breath. After a short silent prayer she rose, calm and self-possessed,
and told the ambassador that she had chosen him for her father confessor
with the Emperor. She had considered carefully all that had been told
her about Philip, and had consulted Arundel, Paget, and Petre[142] on
the subject; and, bearing in mind the good qualities and disposition of
the Prince, she prayed the Emperor to be indulgent with her, and agree
to the conditions necessary for the welfare of her realm; to continue to
be a good father to her, since henceforward he would be doubly her
father, and to urge Philip to be a good husband. Then solemnly upon the
altar, before the Sacred Presence, she promised Renard that she would
marry Philip, Prince of Spain, making him a good and faithful wife,
loving him devotedly without change.[143] She had wavered long in doubt,
she said, but God had illumined her, and her mind was now made up: she
would marry Philip and no one else.
Renard was overjoyed at the news, which he sent flying to the Emperor,
but kept inviolably secret from all others. But though no one knew,
every one suspected; and the muttering of coming trouble sounded on all
sides. Lady Jane Grey, Northumberland’s three sons, Cranmer, Ridley, and
others, were tried and condemned to death. Risings here and there in the
country burst out sporadically, for disaffection was everywhere;
Noailles’ confabulations with Elizabeth and Courtenay were discovered
and denounced; Pole was stopped by the Emperor on his way to England;
and Gardiner, kept in the dark as to the Queen’s irrevocable promise,
still battled against the project of a Spanish match. But the secret had
to be let out at last, and the Spanish adherents in Mary’s council were
obliged to consult Gardiner as to the marriage treaty. They drove a hard
bargain, notwithstanding all the bribes and blandishments, for they were
determined that the marriage should not mean the political subjugation
of England by Spain; and the King Consort’s power was so fenced around
by safeguards and limitations that when Philip finally heard the
conditions, he was well nigh in despair, for he knew that if they were
fulfilled to the letter the marriage would be useless to Spanish
interests, and that his sacrifice would be in vain. But of this the
populace knew nothing. What they did know was, that a Spaniard was
coming to be their King, and London at least shuddered at the plenteous
hints that Noailles had spread, that the Inquisition and the _auto de
fe_ were coming too.
So when, on the 1st January 1554, a troop of foreign servants and
harbingers rode through the city of London to prepare the lodgings of
the brilliant imperial embassy that was to arrive next day, even the
’prentices gathered as they passed and greeted them with curses and
volleys of snowballs.[144] The brilliant Count of Egmont and his train
landed duly at the Tower wharf on the morrow, to ask formally for the
hand of the Queen for the Emperor’s son. ‘They were met by Sir Anthony
Browne, he being clothed in a very gorgeouse apparel. At the Tower Hill
the earle of Devonshire (_i.e._, Courtenay), with the lorde Garrett and
dyvers others, receyved him in most honorable and famylier wyse; and so
the lorde of Devonshire, gevyng him the right hand, brought him
thoroughte Chepsyde, and so fourthe to Dyrram Place (_i.e._, Durham
House in the Strand), the people nothing rejoysing, helde downe their
heddes sorrowfully.’[145] The formalities were soon got through with a
few solemn banquets and courtly ceremonies, and on the 13th January
Gardiner, with as good a face as he could put upon the matter, made an
oration in the Chamber of Presence at Westminster to the lords and
officials, declaring the Queen’s purpose to marry Philip of Spain: ‘in
most godly lawfull matrimonye: and further, that she should have for her
joynter xxx.^{mil}.. ducketes by the yere, with all the Lowe Country of
Flanders; and that the issue betweene them two lawfully begotten
shoulde, yf there were any, be heir as well to the Kingdome of Spayne,
as also to the sayde Lowe Country. He declared further that we were much
bounden to thanck God that so noble, worthye, and famouse a prince,
would vouchsafe so to humble himself in this maryadge to take upon him
rather as a subject than otherwise: and that the Quene should rule all
thinges as nowe: and that there should be of the Counsell no Spanyard,
nether should have the custody of any fortes or castells, nether have
rule or offyce in the quene’s house or elsewhere in all England.’[146]
Gardiner made the best of it, but the bare fact was enough to send the
friends of the late regime, and not a few of those who had profited by
the plunder of the church, into a delirium of fear. Carews, Wyatts, and
Greys protested, rebelled and collapsed, for England, in the main, was
loyal to Mary, and the vast majority of the people, except in and about
London, bitterly resented the iconoclastic changes of Edward’s reign.
The Queen knew her own mind too, and in the face of danger was as firm
as a rock, for in her sight the Spanish marriage meant the resurrection
of her country and the salvation of her people. Charles and his son
doubtless thought so too in a general way, but that was not their first
object. What they wanted was to humble France permanently by means of
their command of English resources, and to make Spain the dictatress of
the world.
On the very day that poor Wyatt’s ‘draggletayles,’ all mud-stained and
weary with their march from Kingston Bridge, were toiling up Fleet
Street to final failure and the gallows, a dusty courier rode into
Valladolid with the news for Philip, that the offer of his hand had been
accepted by the Queen of England. The prince was at Aranjuez, a hundred
miles away, planning his favourite gardens, when the news reached him,
with the premature addition that the Earl of Bedford was already on the
way to Spain with the marriage contract. Philip stopped his pastime at
once and started the same day for Valladolid with his bodyguard of
horsemen in the scarlet and gold of Aragon. In haste the old city put
itself into holiday garb, and organised tourneys, cane-tiltings and
fireworks, to celebrate the agreement which was to make the beloved
Prince of Spain King of England. The looms and broidery-frames of all
the realms were soon busy making the gorgeous garb and glittering
trappings to fit out the nobles and hidalgos who were to follow their
prince to England, each, with Spanish ostentation, bent upon
outstripping his fellows in splendour. Alba, Medina Celi, Aguilar,
Pescara, Feria, Mendoza and Enriquez, and a hundred other haughty
magnates, were bidden to make ready with their armies of retainers all
in fine new clothes, in spite of Renard’s warning that: ‘_Seulement sera
requis que les Espaignolez qui suyuront vostre Alteze comportent les
façons de faire des Angloys, et soient modestes._’
Philip’s steward, Padilla, was sent hurrying to the coast to receive the
Earl of Bedford, who did not start from England for another month; and
the Marquis de las Novas, loaded with splendid presents from Philip to
his bride, set out for England. Mary was conspicuously fond of fine
garments and jewels, and Philip in his youth, and on state occasions,
wore the richest of apparel; but even they must have been sated at the
piled-up sumptuousness for which their wedding was an excuse. Philip’s
offering to Mary, sent by Las Novas, consisted of ‘a great table
diamond, mounted as a rose in a superb gold setting, valued at 50,000
ducats; a collar or necklace of eighteen large brilliants, exquisitely
mounted and set with dainty grace, valued at 32,000 ducats; a great
diamond and a large pearl pendant from it (this was Mary’s favourite
jewel, and may be seen in the accompanying portrait), the most beautiful
gems, says a contemporary eyewitness, ever seen in the world, and worth
25,000 ducats; and then follows a list of pearls, diamonds, emeralds and
rubies, without number, sent to Mary and her ladies by the gallant
bridegroom.[147]
Whilst all these fine preparations were going on in Spain, the Emperor
more than once questioned the wisdom or safety of allowing his son to
risk himself amongst a people so incensed against the match as the
English, and in partial rebellion against it; and Renard held many
anxious conferences with Mary and her council on the subject. The Queen
declared again and again that she would answer for Philip’s safety; and
she put aside, as gently as she could, Renard’s incessant promptings of
greater severity upon Elizabeth, Courtenay and the rest of the suspects
and rebels. Once, at the end of March, Renard told her that if she was
so lenient to rebels, he doubted whether Prince Philip could be trusted
in her realm, ‘as he could not come armed; and if anything befell him it
would be a most disastrous and lamentable scandal. Not only would the
person of his Highness suffer, but also the lords and gentlemen who
accompanied him: and I could not help doubting whether she had taken all
the necessary steps to ensure safety.’ To this she answered, with tears
in her eyes, ‘that she had rather never been born than that any outrage
should happen to the Prince; and she fervently hoped to God that no such
thing would occur. All the members of her Council would do their duty in
their reception of the Prince, and were going to great expense about it.
Her Council shall be reduced to six members, as Paget and Petre had
advised; and she would do her best to dispose the goodwill of her
subjects who wish for the Prince’s coming.’[148]
Mary was overwhelmed with anxiety. ‘She had neither rest nor sleep,’ she
said, ‘for thinking of the means of security for Philip in England.’ But
she would not sacrifice Elizabeth for all the clamouring of Renard, and
even of Gardiner. She knew that the French were almost openly
subsidising rebellion against her; and that her people grew more
apprehensive daily that her marriage with Philip would mean a war with
France for Spanish objects, but she had now set her mind upon the
marriage, and nothing in the world would shake her. Philip, though he
was not personally brave, was equally firm about coming, even at risk of
his life; for his was a spirit of sacrifice and his marriage was a
sacred duty. From duty Philip never shrank, whatever the suffering it
entailed.
On the 14th May 1554 Philip rode out of Valladolid with nearly a
thousand horsemen in gaudy raiment. First going south west to near the
Portuguese frontier to meet his sister Joan, who had just lost her
husband, the Prince of Portugal, he turned aside to take a last farewell
to his grandmother, Joan the Mad, in her prison-palace at Tordesillas,
and then passed on from town to town, through Leon and Galicia; his
puny, hydrocephalic heir, Don Carlos, by his side, towards Santiago and
Corunna. Loving greeting and good wishes followed him everywhere; for
was he not going to fix upon yet another land, and that a rich one, the
seal that marked it as within the circle of the Spanish realms? Proud
were these hidalgos who rode behind him, proud the Spaniards, high and
low, who welcomed him and sped him on his way, proud the very lackeys in
the smallest squireling’s train; for they were all Spaniards, and they
felt that this was a Spanish victory.
On the vigil of St. John, 23rd June, Philip was received at the gates of
Santiago by kneeling citizens with golden keys as usual; and as he and
his train, all flashing in the southern sun, pranced through the streets
of the apostolic capital, two English lords, Bedford and Fitzwalter, sat
at a window with their mantles before their faces, watching the progress
of their future King. The next morning the English special envoys were
publicly led into Philip’s presence. He met them at the door of the
chamber leading into the great hall, and as the Englishmen bent the knee
and doffed their bonnets the Prince uncovered and bowed low. Bedford, ‘a
grandee and a good Christian,’ we are told by an eyewitness, then handed
the marriage contract to him, and kissed hand, as did his colleagues. On
leaving the room one Englishman said to another, apparently delighted at
Philip’s demeanour, ‘O! God be praised for sending us so good a King as
this’; and the Spaniard who heard the remark and understood English was
only too glad of an opportunity of repeating it to his gratified
compatriots. The envoys had good reason to be pleased with Philip, for
though he was usually a bad paymaster to those who served him, he could
be very liberal when it suited him; and on the day after the state
interview a splendid piece of gold plate, magnificently worked, and
standing nearly five feet high, was presented to Bedford, all the rest
of the Englishmen being dealt with in similar generous fashion.
In the harbour a fine fleet of vessels rode at anchor with several
English royal vessels; and Bedford prayed that Philip would make the
voyage in one of the latter. This, however, was not considered prudent
or dignified; but the English envoys were given the privilege of
choosing amongst the Spanish vessels that which should carry the King.
It was a fine ship they selected, belonging to Martin de Bertondona, one
of the first sailors in Spain; and when Philip went to inspect it the
next day it must have presented a splendid sight, with its towering
gilded poop and forecastle, its thousand fluttering pennons; and over
all the proud royal standard of crimson damask thirty yards long.[149]
At length, after much ceremonious junketing, the heralds announced that
the King would embark the next day, 12th July. There were over a hundred
sail, fully armed and carrying a body of over six thousand men to
reinforce the Emperor, besides six thousand sailors; and when the King
stepped upon his beautiful twenty-four-oared galley, all decked with
silk and cloth of gold, with minstrels and rowers clad in damask
doublets and plumed bonnets to go on board the ship that was to bear him
to England, the ‘Espiritu Santo,’ the great crowd on shore cried aloud
to God and Santiago to send the royal traveller a safe and happy voyage,
and confusion to the French. On the fifth day out a Flemish fleet of
eighteen sail hove in sight off the Land’s End, and convoyed the Prince
past the Needles with some ships of the English navy; and on Thursday,
19th July 1554, the combined fleets anchored in Southampton Water amidst
the thunderous salutes of the English and Flemish ships at anchor there
to greet them.
The English and Flemish sailors had not got on well together during the
stay of the Flemish fleet at Southampton. The officers suspected the
Lord Admiral of England (Lord William Howard) of intriguing with the
French to capture Philip on his way; and reported that he made little
account of the Flemish Admiral, de la Chapelle, and called his ships
mussel shells. When some of the Flemings had landed the English soldiers
had hustled and insulted them in the streets; and by the time Philip
arrived in Southampton water the two naval forces were not on speaking
terms.[150] On shore things were no better. The nobility of England,
usually so lavish, except those around the Queen, were for the most part
sulking as much as they dared. They were too poor, they declared, to
make great and costly preparations to receive the King, and even a
majority of the Queen’s Council were suspected of plotting in favour of
Elizabeth; whilst Noailles was tireless in his efforts to spread alarm
and disaffection.
Bedford had reported that Philip was a bad sailor, but fortunately the
voyage had been a calm one, and he remained at anchor for twenty hours
before he landed for the first time in England; so that he was quite
able to carry out the instructions of his father, and the
recommendations of Renard, to conciliate the English in every possible
way. During his visit years before to Germany and Flanders he had
offended the subjects there by his cold precision of manner and his
Spanish abstemiousness; but from the first hour of his stay in England,
his whole behaviour underwent a change, for at the call of duty he was
even willing to sacrifice all his usual tastes and habits. A crowd of
English nobles and courtiers who were to be Philip’s household came off
at once to salute him on board the ‘Espiritu Santo’; and when the next
day he stepped into the magnificent royal barge that was to bear him to
land, the Earl of Arundel invested him with the badge of the Garter in
the name of the Queen. With him, besides the English lords, there went
in the barge a stately crowd of Spanish grandees, Alba, Feria, Ruy
Gomez, his only friend, Olivares, with Egmont, Horn, and Bergues; but no
soldier or man-at-arms was allowed on shore on pain of death. Philip had
learnt from Renard the agony of distrust felt in England of Spanish
arms, and at the same time came the even less welcome news that the
Emperor had suffered a defeat in Flanders, and needed urgently every
soldier that could be sent to him. So the Spanish fleet was not even
allowed to enter the port of Southampton, but after some delay and much
grumbling on the part of the Spaniards at what they considered churlish
treatment, was sent to Portsmouth to revictual for their voyage to
Flanders.
As Philip stepped ashore, Sir Anthony Browne in a Latin speech announced
that the Queen had appointed him her consort’s master of the horse, and
had sent him the beautiful white charger, housed in crimson velvet and
gold, that was champing its bit hard by. The King would have preferred
to walk the short distance to the house prepared for him; but Browne and
the lords in waiting told him that this was not usual, and the former
‘took him up in his arms and placed him in the saddle, then kissing the
stirrup, marched bareheaded by the side of his new master to the Church
of Holy Rood.’ The King must have looked a gracious figure as he passed
through the curious crowd smiling and bowing, dapper and erect on his
steed, with his short yellow beard and close-cropped yellow head;
dressed as he was in black velvet and silver, with massive gold chains
and glittering gems on his breast, around his velvet bonnet, and at his
neck and wrists; and every one around him, so far as fine clothes went,
was a fit pendant to him. All the English guards, archers, and porters
wore the red and yellow of Aragon; and the nobles in attendance, both
English and Spanish, were splendid in the extreme; but beneath the silk
and jewels beat hearts full of hate. The Spanish servants, 400 of them,
who landed, were not allowed by the jealous English to act for their
master in any way; and at Philip’s public dinner the day before he left
Southampton, Alba forcibly asserted his right to hand the napkin to his
master; whilst all the lowlier courtiers stood by, idly scoffing and
sneering at the clumsy service of their English supplanters.
During the four days of Philip’s stay at Southampton, whilst his
belongings were being landed, splendid presents and loving messages
passed almost hourly to and fro between Mary and her betrothed. Hundreds
of gaily clad servitors, with finely houselled horses, diamond rings and
gold chains galore, came from the Queen at Winchester, though a
continuous pelting rain was falling; and on Monday, 23rd July, the great
cavalcade set out from Southampton 3000 strong. To the disgust of the
Spaniards the King was surrounded by Englishmen alone; and on the way
600 more English gentlemen in black velvet and gold chains met him, sent
by the Queen as an additional bodyguard; followed a few miles further on
by another embassy from her of six pages clad in crimson brocade and
gold sashes, with six more beautiful horses.[151] The rain never ceased,
and soon Philip’s felt cloak failed to keep dry his black velvet surcoat
and his trunks and doublet of white satin embroidered with gold. So wet
was he, indeed, that he had to stay at St. Cross to don another suit
just as splendid, consisting of a black velvet surcoat covered with gold
bugles, and white velvet doublet and trunks. And so clad he and his
train rode to the stately cathedral of Winchester to hear mass; and then
to the Dean’s house close by, where he was to lodge.
That night at ten o’clock, after he had supped, the Earl of Arundel came
and told him that the Queen awaited him at the Bishop’s palace on the
other side of the Cathedral. Once more he donned a change of garments:
this time of white kid covered with gold embroidery; and with a little
crowd of English and Spanish nobles, he crossed the narrow lane between
the two gardens, and entered that of the Bishop by a door in the
wall.[152] A private staircase gave access to the Queen’s apartment, and
there Philip saw his bride for the first time. The apartment was a long
narrow gallery, where Gardiner and several other elderly councillors
were assembled; and as Philip entered the Queen was pacing up and down
impatiently. She was, as usual, magnificently dressed, with many jewels
over her black velvet gown, cut high, with a petticoat of frosted
silver. When her eyes lighted on him who was to be her husband, she came
rapidly forward, kissing her hand before taking his, whilst he gallantly
kissed her upon the mouth, in English fashion.
In her case, at all events, it was love at first sight. The poor woman,
starved and hungry for love all her life, betrayed and ill-treated by
those who should have shielded her, with a soul driven back upon itself,
at last had found in this fair, trim built, young man, ten years her
junior, a being whom she could love without reproach and without
distrust. He confronted the match in a pure spirit of sacrifice; for to
him it meant the victory of the cause for which he and his great father
lived. It meant, sooner or later, the crushing of France, the
extirpation of heresy, and the hegemony of Spain over Europe; and though
Mary was no beauty, Philip was a chivalrous gentleman, and, having
decided to offer himself as a sacrifice for the cause, he did so with a
good grace. Sitting under the canopy side by side, the lovers chatted
amicably; he speaking in Spanish and she in French, though she made some
coquettish attempts to teach him English words.
The next day brought fresh changes of gorgeous raiment, this time of
purple velvet and gold, and the public reception of Philip by his bride
in the great hall. There, under the canopy of state, the betrothed
pledged each other in a cup of wine, whilst the Spanish courtiers
sneered at everything English, and the Englishmen frowned at the
Spaniards. On the day of St. James, the patron saint of Spain (25th
July), the ancient cathedral was aglow with brilliant colour. All the
pomp that expenditure could command, or fancy devise, was there to
honour a wedding which apparently was to decide the fate of the world
for centuries. The Queen, we are told, blazed with jewels to an extent
that dazzled those who gazed upon her, as she swept up to her seat
before the altar, with her long train of cloth of gold over her black
velvet gown sparkling with precious stones. Philip wore a similar
mantle, covered with gems, over a dress of white satin almost hidden by
chains and jewels. Upon a platform erected in the midst of the nave,
Philip and Mary were made man and wife by Bishop Gardiner, who
afterwards proclaimed to the assembly that the Emperor had transferred
to his son the title of King of Naples.
At the wedding banquet in the bishop’s palace that afternoon Mary took
precedence of her husband. She sat on the higher throne, and ate off
gold plate, whilst Philip was served on silver; and Spaniards scowled at
the idea that their prince should be second to any. The solid
sumptuousness and abundance of everything struck the Spaniards with
amazement, both at the banquet and at the ball and supper which
followed. But the richer the country the greater their disappointment.
Already they were grumbling that the sacrifice the King had made was
vain. Philip, after all, was not to be master in England, and must go to
a council to ask permission to do anything with English resources. Nay,
said the courtiers, so far from being master, it is he who has to dance
as these Englishmen play: he must bend to their prejudices and caprices,
not they to his, as was fitting for vassals. The English, on their side,
were just as dour under the terrifying predictions of French agents; and
as the royal lovers travelled to Basing, and so to Windsor, Richmond and
London, matters grew worse and worse.
Philip and Renard did their best to smooth ruffled susceptibilities. All
acts of clemency were ostentatiously coupled with Philip’s name, and the
King surpassed himself in amiability and generosity.[153] Mary, in the
meantime, was perfectly infatuated with her young husband, and he was
kind and gentle to her, as he was to each of his wives in turn. ‘Their
Majesties,’ writes a Spanish courtier, ‘are the happiest couple in the
world, and are more in love with each other than I can say. He never
leaves her, and on the road is always by her side, lifting her into the
saddle and helping her to dismount. He dines with her, publicly
sometimes, and they go to mass together on feast days.’ Then the same
writer continues: ‘These English are the most ungrateful people in the
world, and hate Spaniards worse than the devil. They rob us, even in the
middle of the city, and not a soul of us dares to venture two miles away
for fear of molestation. There is no justice for us at all. We are
ordered by the King to avoid disputes and put up with everything whilst
we are here, and to endure all their attacks in silence.... We are told
that we must bear everything for his Majesty’s sake.’[154]
Spanish nobles were openly insulted in the streets of London, and
Spanish priests stoned in the churches: but this was not the worst. What
galled most was the growing conviction that all this humiliation was in
vain. Instead of a submissive people ready to bow the neck to the new
King and his countrymen, the Spaniards found a country where the
sovereign’s power was strictly circumscribed, and where a foreigner’s
only hope of domination was by force of arms. ‘This marriage will,
indeed, have been a failure if the Queen have no children,’ wrote one of
Philip’s chamberlains. ‘They told us in Castile that if his Highness
became King of England we should be masters of France ... but instead of
that the French are stronger than ever, and are doing as they like in
Flanders. Kings here have as little power as if they were subjects; the
people who really govern are the councillors, who are the King’s
masters.... They say openly that they will not let our King go until
they and the Queen think fit, as this country is quite big enough to
satisfy any one King.’
But still Philip struggled on, gaining ascendency over his wife and
gradually influencing the councillors by gifts and graciousness.[155]
The fifty gallows that had borne as many dead sympathisers of Wyatt were
cleared from the streets, and the skulls of the higher offenders were
banished from London Bridge, so that the triumphant entry of Philip and
Mary into the capital should be marred by no evil reminders; but though
London was loyal to Mary, it hated Spaniards more than any city in the
realm; and the crowd that hailed the Queen effusively when, on the 18th
August, she and her husband went in state from Southwark through the
city to Whitehall, listened and believed the wild and foolish rumours
that a great army of Spaniards was coming to fetch away the crown of
England; that a Spanish friar was to be Archbishop of Canterbury, that
English treasure was being sent from the Tower to fill the Emperor’s
coffers, and much else of the same sort that French agents set afloat;
so, withal, there were few who smiled upon the Queen’s consort, let him
smile as he might upon them. Fair pageants decked the street corners,
and far-fetched compliments were recited to the King and Queen by
children dressed as angels, for the corporation of London had been
warned that there must be no lack of official signs of welcome; but to
prove how sensitive and apprehensive both the court and the people were,
the story is told of how the Conduit in Gracechurch Street was decked
with painted figures of kings, one of whom, Henry VIII., was represented
with a bible labelled ‘_Verbum Dei_’ in his hand; whereupon Gardiner, in
a towering rage, thinking this quite innocent representation was
intended as an insult to the Catholic idea of the Bible, sent for the
painter and threatened him with all sorts of punishments.
Philip’s patience, however, was gradually breaking down the distrust
entertained in him. It was seen that wherever his influence was exerted
it was on the side of moderation; though of course it was not understood
that this and all his sweetness was only part of the deep plan of the
Emperor to obtain for his son full control of English policy. Mary’s
position at the time was a most difficult one. She was deeply in love
with her husband; and she desired fervently the aggrandisement of Spain,
which would mean the triumph of Catholicism over heresy and security for
her throne; but she was an English Queen, determined if she could to
rule for the good of her people, and to bring about peace with France
before she was drawn into the war. When Noailles saw Mary to give his
tardy and insincere congratulations on the marriage that he had tried so
hard to thwart, she assured him that her friendship with France was
unchanged, and Philip immediately afterwards added his assurance that he
would maintain intact all the alliances contracted by England, whilst
they were for England’s good.[156]
After Pole had been made to understand that the full restitution of
church property in England must not be pressed, or revolution would
result, he was allowed to come to England as legate, and the country
formally returned to the pale of the church in November 1554. On the
very day that Pole arrived it was officially announced that the Queen
was pregnant; and all England, and still more all Spaniards, greeted the
great news as a special favour vouchsafed by heaven. To Philip and his
father it meant very much; for if a son was born the hold of Spain over
England would be complete for generations, at least long enough for the
great task of unification of the faith to be effected. Its significance,
even in anticipation, was made use of by Philip at once, and during the
jubilation to which it gave rise, he caused his spokesman in parliament
to propose the sending of an armed English contingent to aid the Emperor
in the war against France, and the appointment of himself as Regent of
England in case the expected child outlived his mother. The zeal of
Bonner and Gardiner, however, spoilt it all. They had already begun
their fell work of religious persecution; and the reaction that
naturally resulted against Spain compelled the Queen to dissolve
parliament in a hurry before Philip’s turn was served.
Not only was Philip personally opposed to the persecution in England,
which he saw would injure his object, but he caused his chaplains openly
to denounce from the pulpit the policy pursued by the English bishops.
Renard ceaselessly deplored in his letters to the Emperor this over zeal
of the English churchman, whose one idea of course was to serve, as they
thought, their church, and not Spanish political ends. For six months
Philip stood in the breach and dammed the tide of persecution: but his
father was growing impatient for his presence in Flanders. The deadly
torpor was creeping over him, though he was not yet old, as it had crept
over others of his house; and he had begged for months that his son
should come and relieve him of his burden. Philip had waited week after
week in the ever deluded hope that Mary’s promise of issue would be
fulfilled; but, at last, even the unhappy Queen herself had become
incredulous, and her husband could delay his departure no longer. By
August 1555 the rogations and intercessions to the Almighty for the safe
birth of a prince were ordered to be discontinued, and the splendid plot
of the Emperor and Philip to bring England and its resources permanently
to their side against France and heresy, was admitted to be a failure.
The conviction that she was to be childless was only gradually forced
upon Mary; for she had prayed and yearned so much for motherhood that
she could hardly believe that heaven would abandon her thus. In her mind
a son born of her and Philip would have made England, as she said,
Catholic and strong for ever; and as the bitter truth of her barrenness
came home to the Queen she sank deeper into gloomy despondency,
increased by the knowledge that her beloved husband, polite and
considerate though he was to her, was obliged to leave her, with the
tacit understanding that their marriage had failed in its chief object.
Mary passionately longed to bring about peace between her husband’s
country and France. She knew that the revolutionary movement in and
about London was being actively fomented by French intrigue; that the
crowd of pamphlets and scurrilous publications attacking her and her
faith were being paid for with French money; and that unless peace was
soon made or the agitation stopped England would be drawn into the war
and her throne would be in peril. But her efforts towards peace met with
little real aid from the French, for any step that consolidated her
position and gave time for Spaniards and Englishmen to settle down under
one system would have meant ruin to France; and Mary’s Council, and more
reluctantly Mary herself, was obliged to turn to the other alternative,
and attempt to suppress the organised manifestations of rebellion
against her rule.
The burning of heretical and treasonable books, and even of the Edward
VI. prayer book, was but a prelude to the burning of bodies, and Renard
warned the Emperor that before Philip had been gone six months from
England the holocaust would begin. It matters little whether the
persecutions were religious or political—the apologists of Mary and
Elizabeth respectively strive to prove that their victims in each case
were political criminals; and doubtless, according to the letter of the
law, they were—but it was clear to Philip and his father, that whatever
excuse might be advanced for the burning of Englishmen by Mary’s
Council, the executions would increase the ill-feeling against Spain,
and make English resources less available to them against France. But
notwithstanding this Charles would wait no longer for his son, and
peremptorily ordered him to return to Flanders.
Philip accompanied his wife in state through London from Hampton Court
to Greenwich[157] for the farewell; and there urged her—as he did her
Council—to be moderate in punishment. Mary herself was kindly and
gentle; but she was a Tudor Queen, and she lived in an age when the life
of the individual was considered as nothing to the safety of the State
as constituted. Moreover, counsels of moderation coming from Philip of
Spain, the patron of the Inquisition, could hardly have sounded very
convincing; though they were sincere in the circumstances, for Philip
was a statesman before all things, and persecution in England at the
time was contrary to his policy. In any case Philip did his best to keep
his hand on the brake before saying goodbye to his wife. Mary was in the
deepest affliction when she took leave of him on the 29th August 1555,
though she struggled to retain her composure before the spectators of
the scene. With one close embrace she bade him farewell, and sought
solitude in a room of which the window commanded a view of the Thames.
So long as the barge that bore him to Gravesend was in sight Mary’s
tear-dimmed eyes followed it yearningly; whilst Philip, courteously
punctilious, continued waving his hand and lifting his plumed cap to her
until a turn in the river shut him from her sight.
Renard was right. No sooner had Philip gone than the fires blazed out.
Hooper, Rogers, Saunders and Tayor, were burnt a fortnight afterwards;
then Ridley and Latimer some weeks later, to be followed in a few months
by Cranmer and the host of others less distinguished. Gardiner, Mary’s
prime minister and only able councillor, died in November, just after
the opening of parliament; and then, with Pole, practically a foreign
ecclesiastic, as her only guide, with a divided Council, and herself in
utter despondency, Mary sank deeper and deeper into impotence. Philip
had ordered before he left that minutes of all the Council meetings
should be sent to him, but he soon found it difficult to control, for
his own ends, the action of ministers far away; and when soon afterwards
he began to press for English ships to fight the French at sea, he found
the Queen’s Council tardy and unwilling. The ships, they said, were not
ready; but as soon as possible some would be sent to guard the Channel.
This did not suit Philip. The ships must be instantly fitted out and
commissioned; not at Dover, as the Council had promised, but at
Portsmouth, to guard the Emperor’s passage to Spain. This, of course,
was the thin end of the wedge; what he really needed—and it was now the
only benefit he could hope for from his marriage—was that an English
fleet should be at his disposal to attack France. The coolness of the
English Council and the continued refusal to accede to Mary’s request
and give him the crown matrimonial of England, soon changed Philip’s
attitude, and the suavity that had so remarkably characterised him in
England gave way to his usual dry _hauteur_ towards Englishmen whom he
met in Brussels.
He had found his father in the last stage of mental and bodily
depression. All had gone ill with him; and the burden of his task, as
far from fulfilment as ever, was greater than he could any longer bear.
‘Fortune,’ he said, ‘is a strumpet, and reserves her favours for the
young;’ and so to the young Philip he had determined to transmit his
mighty mission of Christian unification as a means of Spanish
predominance. In October 1555, in perhaps the most dramatic scene in
history, the Emperor solemnly handed to Philip the sovereignty of
Flanders; and on the 16th January 1556, the assembly of Spanish
grandees, in the great hall of the palace of Brussels, witnessed the
surrender of the historic crowns of Castile and Aragon by Charles V. to
his beloved only son. Heart-broken Mary Tudor from that day was Queen of
Spain, as well as Queen of England. The title was a hollow one for her,
though, for her mother’s sake and her own, she loved the country which
alone had succoured them in their trouble; for Philip’s accession made
the return of her husband to her side more than ever remote. Philip had
promised faithfully to come back, and in his letters to her he repeated
his promise again and again. On one occasion when he was indisposed,
Mary sent a special envoy with anxious inquiries after his health. There
was nothing more the matter than the result of some little extra gaiety
on Philip’s part; and he reassured his wife and announced his immediate
visit to England. The English messenger, overjoyed at the good news,
said to some of Philip’s gentlemen, that, though he was delighted to be
able to bear the glad tidings to the Queen, he would take care not to
tell her that his Majesty had exposed himself twice to the dreadful
weather then prevailing, and of his dancing at weddings, as the Queen
was so easily upset and was so anxious about him that she might be too
much afflicted.[158]
But still Philip came not; and soon afterwards Mary was thrown into
despair by the order from Brussels, that the King’s household in England
was to proceed to Spain. The English people followed the Spanish
courtiers with reviling when they embarked, for the fear of being drawn
into the war was stronger than ever; but to the Queen their departure
was a heavy blow, for it meant that her husband would live in England no
more. For a few months in the early part of 1556, the alliance of the
Pope and the King of France against the Emperor and Philip was broken up
by the settlement of a truce between the latter and the French King; and
for a time matters looked more hopeful for Mary; but in the summer of
1556, the war with France broke out again, and Philip found himself face
to face with a powerful coalition of the Papacy, France and the Turk. It
meant a war over half of Europe, and now if ever England might aid its
Spanish King Consort. Philip wrote constantly urging the English Council
to join him in the war against France; but met only with evasions. Mary
was breaking her heart in sorrow and disappointment, but was willing to
do anything to please Philip. She had, moreover, her own grudge against
France; for Noailles and his master had left no stone unturned to ruin
her from the first day of her accession. But her Council, and above all,
her subjects, had always dreaded this as a result of her Spanish
marriage, and were almost unanimously opposed to the entrance of England
into a strife which mainly concerned the supremacy of Spain over Italy.
Mary, moreover, was in the deepest poverty, owing to her own firm
resolve against all advice to restore to the church the forfeited tenths
and first fruits; and the forced loans collected from the gentry, it was
untruly said at the instance of the Spaniards for the purposes of their
war, had caused the deepest discontent in the country.
It was clear that nothing more could be got from England for Spanish
objects unless some special effort were made, and Philip was forced to
undertake the journey himself to try the effect of personal pressure.
Mary’s joy at the news of his coming was pathetic in its intensity,
though Pole warned her that, as had happened on other occasions, Philip
might not be able to come after all. The hope of seeing her husband
again seemed to give her new life, and she hurried to London, visiting
Pole at Lambeth on the way, and exerting herself to the utmost to win
him to her side. Thenceforward for weeks, whilst the King’s voyage was
pending, the English Council sat nearly night and day, and couriers
incessantly hurried backwards and forwards to and from London, Brussels,
and Paris.[159] The French reinforced their troops around Calais and
Guisnes, and all the signs pointed to the approach of a war between
England and France at the bidding of Philip.
The King landed at Dover on the 18th March 1557, and again all his
haughty frigidity gave way to genial smiles for all that was
English.[160] To the Queen’s delight he spent two quiet days with her
alone at Greenwich, and then rode through London to Whitehall by her
side as she sat in her litter. Their reception by the citizens was
polite, but cold; for though Philip personally was not unpopular, the
idea of going to war with France for another nation’s quarrel was
distasteful in the extreme to Englishmen of all classes. What
complicated the situation infinitely was that Philip was at war with the
Pope—that violent, headstrong enemy of his house and nation, Cardinal
Caraffa, Paul IV.—and Pole, as legate, could not even greet the King,
much less acquiesce as a political minister in a war against the Papacy
on the part of England. Mary, too, was torn between her devotion to the
Church on the one hand and her love for her husband on the other. Her
idea, and that of her Council, was to provide a subsidy and an English
contingent to Philip, without entering into a national war; and this
much, under the existing treaty between Charles v. and Henry VIII. in
1543, Philip had a right to claim if he was attacked by France.
But the King wanted more from his wife’s country than that which he
could have claimed even if he had not married the Queen, and he
ceaselessly urged upon Mary, and upon her Council, heavily bribed to a
man, the granting of much greater aid than that offered. He was at last
successful in this, though it was still arranged that there was to be no
declaration of war by Mary against France, the English forces being used
only for the defence of Flanders and the territory of Calais. There were
to be 8000 infantry and 1000 horse, and an English fleet with 6000
fighting men was to be raised and maintained, half at the cost of
England and half by Philip.
When this had been arranged, France struck her counterblow, for it was
clearly better for her to be at open war, in which she could adopt
reprisals on the Scottish border, than to fight English contingents in
Philip’s service. The English Protestant exiles in France were made much
of and subsidised; and hare-brained Stafford and his crew of foolish
young gallants sailed from Dieppe on Easter Sunday to seize the crown of
England for himself. He captured Scarborough, but himself was captured
directly afterwards, and incontinently lost his head. It was a silly,
hopeless business; but the rebels had started from France, and had been
helped by the French King, and the fact was argument enough. On the 6th
June 1557, war was declared between England and France, and Philip, at
last, saw some return for his marriage in England. He hated war, and his
methods were in all things different from those of a soldier; but his
best chance of securing a durable peace was to show his strength whilst
his hold over English resources lasted, and it was clear from Mary’s
declining health that this would not be long.
At the beginning of July, Philip rode for the last time from Gravesend
through Canterbury to Dover, his ailing wife being carried in a litter
by his side. On the 3rd July he bade her farewell as he stepped into the
barge that carried him to the galleon awaiting him, and Mary, with death
in her heart, turned her back to the sea, and went desolate to her home
in London.
The combined army in Flanders was commanded by the brilliant young
soldier, Emanuel Philibert of Savoy, who had 50,000 men, whilst the
French army, under Constable Montmorenci, reached barely half that
number. Savoy began the campaign by several rapid feints that deceived
the French, and then suddenly invested St. Quintin, into which Coligny
with 1,200 men just managed to enter before Savoy reached it. Finding
himself in a trap, Coligny begged Montmorenci to come to his relief. The
first attempt at this failed; and on the the 10th August the French main
body made a desperate effort to enter the town by boats over the Somme.
This was found impossible, and Montmorenci’s force was surprised and
taken in the rear by Savoy’s superior strategy. The order to retire was
given too late, and the French retreat soon became a panic-stricken
rout. Six thousand Frenchmen were killed, and as many more captured,
with all the artillery and Montmorenci himself; and there was no force
existent between Savoy’s victorious army and the gates of Paris. Philip
was at Cambrai during the battle; and if he had been a soldier, like his
cousin Savoy, or even like his father, he might have captured the
capital, and have brought France to her knees. But he turned a deaf ear
to Savoy’s prayers, and lost his chance, as he did all his life, by
over-deliberation. _Te Deums_ were chanted, votive offerings promised,
joy bells rung, but Philip’s host moved no further onward. St. Quintin
itself held out for a fortnight longer; and murder, sack, and pillage,
by the rascal mercenaries of Philip, held high saturnalia, in spite of
his strict command, and to his horror when he witnessed the havoc
wrought: and then, with the fatal over-deliberation that ruined him, he
tamely quartered his men in the conquered territory instead of pressing
his victory home.
The Germans, discontented with their loot, quarrelled and deserted by
the thousand; the English, sulky and unpaid, grumbled incessantly; and
the Spaniards asserted that they had shown no stomach for the fight
before St. Quintin. Their hearts, indeed, were not in the war, for it
concerned them not, and they demanded to be sent home. In London, the
most was made of the victory of St. Quintin by the Queen’s Government.
Bonfires blazed in the streets, free drink rejoiced the lieges, and
Pole, in the Queen’s name, congratulated Philip upon so signal a mark of
divine favour; but the people wanted to gain no victories for
foreigners, and obstinately refused to be glad. Philip, as usual, was
pressed for money, and rather than keep the unruly English contingent
through the winter, he acceded to their request to be allowed to go
home.
Whilst Philip’s forces were melting away in idleness the fine French
army under Guise, who were fighting the Spaniards outside Rome, were
suddenly recalled by Henry II. to the Flemish frontier. The Pope was
then obliged to make terms with Alba, and withdrew from the war, leaving
the greater antagonists face to face. The English fortress of Calais had
been neglected, and at the declaration of war Noailles, on his way back
to France, had reported that it might be captured without difficulty.
Guise and his army from Italy suddenly appeared before the fortress, and
stormed and captured the Rysbank-fort on the sandy island forming Calais
harbour. The news, when it came the next day (4th January 1558), to
Mary, found her again in high hopes of a child; and she received it
bravely, setting about means to reinforce the town without the loss of a
day. Lord Pembroke was ordered to raise a force of 5000 men and cross to
Philip’s town of Dunkirk. But before they were ready matters were
desperate, for treachery was at work within and without the fortress of
Calais. Lord Grey de Wilton at Guisnes was also in evil case; ‘clean cut
off,’ as he says, ‘from all aid and relief. I have looked for both out
of England and Calais, and know not how to have help by any means,
either of men or victuals. There resteth now none other way for the
succour of Calais, and the rest of your Highness’s places on this side,
but a power of men out of England, or from the King’s Majesty, or from
both.’ A first attempt to storm the citadel of Calais failed, but a few
days later a great force of artillery was brought to bear. Wentworth,
the governor, and Grey, the governor of Guisnes, sent beseeching
messages to Philip for relief, but the time was short, and no sufficient
force to attack Guise could be raised. Philip from the first had been
impressing upon the English Council the need for strengthening Calais;
but, as we have seen, they were overburdened, without money, and without
any able leader. Calais had been left to its fate, and on the 8th
January 1558 the place cheerfully surrendered to the French. A few days
afterwards Guisnes fell, and the last foothold of the English in France
was gone for ever.
When Guise had first approached Calais, Philip instructed his favourite
Count de Feria to hasten to England and insist upon reinforcements being
sent. Before his departure Calais fell, and on arriving at Dunkirk to
embark he learnt of the loss of Guisnes; whereupon he delayed his
departure for a day, in order not to be the bearer of the last bad news.
The tidings of the English defeats had fallen like a thunderbolt upon
Mary and her advisers; but there was no repining yet, so far as the
Queen was concerned, for God might yet, she hoped, send her a son, and
then all would be well. She would, she said, have the head of any
councillor of hers who dared to talk about making peace without the
restitution of the captured fortresses; and church and laymen alike
opened coffers wide to provide funds for avenging English honour and
protecting English soil.
Feria arrived in London on the 26th January, though the primary reason
of his mission had disappeared when Calais fell. He saw Mary
immediately, and found her stout of heart and hopeful, desirous of all
things to please her husband, though doubtful about the goodwill of her
Council. Two days afterwards Feria met the Council in Pole’s room, and
presented his master’s demands. Mary had told the ambassador that both
they, and the people at large, were murmuring that the war was of
Philip’s making, and she thought that it would be well boldly to face
and refute that point before it was advanced by the councillors. The
Council listened politely to the King’s message, and recognising that
they had before them the ideas not only of King Philip, but of their own
Queen as well, took time to reply. A day or two afterwards the Council
visited Feria, and Archbishop Heath, the chancellor, delivered their
answer. It was couched in submissive language towards Philip, and told a
sorry story. Far from being able to send any troops across the sea, they
badly wanted troops for their own defence. The coast and the Isle of
Wight were at the mercy of the French, and an invasion was threatened
over the Scottish Border. But if King Philip would send them 3000 German
mercenaries, for which they would pay, they would quarter them in
Newcastle to protect the north country, and they would then arm a
hundred ships in the Channel with a considerable force of men, some of
whom might be used, at need, for Philip’s service. Feria reported that
the 5000 Englishmen he had seen at Dover, intended for embarkation, were
disorderly rascals, useless as soldiers, and he and his master agreed
that nothing could now be expected from England in the form of a
military contingent for foreign service.
The country, says Feria, is in such a condition that if a hundred
enemies were to land on the coast they could do as they liked.[161]
Confusion was spreading throughout all classes in England, owing to the
dislike of the war for the sake of Spain, and to the disquieting news of
the Queen’s health. Not a third of the usual congregation go to church
since the fall of Calais, reported Feria; and when, in a conversation
with the Queen, the ambassador explained to her how the Spanish nobility
were bound to contribute so many mounted men each, in case of war, Mary
sadly shook her head at the idea of applying any such rule to England.
‘Not all the nobility of England together,’ she said, ‘would furnish her
with a hundred horse.’ Parliament was sitting, and at the demand of
money tongues began to wag that it was to send across the sea to the
Queen’s Spanish husband, whose proud envoy could only sneer and scoff at
the clumsy English way of raising funds for their sovereign, and tell
everybody that he would be only too glad if he could prevail upon them
to raise the necessary money for their own defence, for his master
wanted none of it from them.
Philip did not go so far as that, for he was very hard pressed indeed,
and urged upon Mary some other way of collecting funds besides the
parliamentary vote. In vain Gresham tried to borrow £10,000 in Antwerp
on the Queen’s credit; attempts to cajole more money from the church and
the nobles were made with but small result. The money from the
parliamentary grant and other sources that could be got together was
sent to Flanders to pay for the raising of German levies for the English
service; and at once the murmurs in London grew to angry shouts, that
English money was being sent out for King Philip. The fitting out of the
English fleet, ostensibly for coast defence, was hurried forward, for
the distracted English councillors were deluded into the idea that a
great combined movement would be made to recover Calais: they were
frightened by a false rumour that there was a strong French fleet at
Dieppe, that the Hanse Towns and Denmark would descend on the east
coast; anything to get them to push forward a strong fleet, really,
though not ostensibly, for Philip’s purpose. But Philip took care when
the fleet was ready that Clinton should use it as he desired;[162] and
the much talked of 3000 German mercenaries never came to England, but in
due time were incorporated in Philip’s army. It is curious to see how
cleverly Feria and his master worked off the Queen against her
councillors, and vice versa. With regard to these mercenaries, for
instance, though the King was constantly sending letters and messages to
his wife, he purposely refrained from mentioning his desire to make use
of the Germans, for whom she had paid. ‘I am writing nothing of this to
the Queen,’ he wrote; ‘I would rather that you (Feria) should prudently
work with the councillors to induce them to ask _us_ to relieve them of
these troops.’[163]
Mary’s hopes of progeny were once more seen to be delusive; and she, in
deep despondency now, was seen to be rapidly failing. Pole also was a
dying man, said Feria; and all the other councillors, though constantly
clamouring for Spanish bribes, were drifting away from the present
regime. ‘Those whom your Majesty has rewarded most are the men who serve
the least: Pembroke, Arundel, Paget, Petre, Heath, the Bishop of Ely and
the Controller.’ Even Philip himself was ready now to turn to the rising
sun, and away from his waning wife. ‘What you write (he replied to
Feria) about visiting Madam Elizabeth before you leave England, for the
reasons you mention, seems very wise; and I am writing to the Queen that
I have ordered you to go and see the Princess, and I beg the Queen also
to order you to do so.’[164] When Feria had frightened the Queen and
Council out of all that was possible, he went to Hatfield to see
Elizabeth, with all manner of kind messages and significant hints from
Philip; and sailed from England in July, leaving as his successor a
Flemish lawyer named D’assonleville.