1553
Mary’s marriage in question--Pole and Courtenay--Foreign
suitors--The Prince of Spain proposed to her--Elizabeth’s
attitude--Lady Jane’s letter to Hardinge--The coronation--Cranmer
in the Tower--Lady Jane attainted--Letter to her father--Sentence
of death--The Spanish match.
To Mary there were at present matters of more personal and pressing
moment than the fate of her ill-starred cousin. It was essential that
the kingdom should be provided as quickly as possible with an heir
whose title to the throne should admit of no question. Mary was no
longer young and there was no time to lose. The question in all men’s
minds was who was to be the Queen’s husband. Amongst Englishmen, Pole,
who, though a Cardinal, was not in priest’s orders, and Courtenay, the
prisoner of the Tower, were both of royal blood, and considered in the
light of possible aspirants to her hand. The first, however, was soon
set aside, as disqualified by age and infirmity. Towards Courtenay
she appeared for a time not ill-disposed. His unhappy youth, his long
captivity, may have told in his favour in the eyes of a woman herself
the victim of injustice and misfortune. He was young, not more than
twenty-seven, handsome--called by Castlenau “l’un des plus beaux entre
les jeunes seigneurs de son âge”--and the Queen cherished a special
affection for his mother. He had been restored to the forfeited honours
of his family, had been made Earl of Devonshire and Knight of the
Bath. Gardiner also, whose opinion carried weight, was an advocate of
the match. But on his enfranchisement from prison the young man had
not used his liberty wisely. His head turned by the position already
his, and the chance of a higher one, he had started his household
on a princely scale, inducing many of the courtiers to kneel in his
presence. Follies such as these Mary might have condoned, although the
fact that she directed her cousin to accept no invitations to dinner
without her permission indicates the exercise of a supervision somewhat
like that to be kept over an emancipated schoolboy. But at a moment
when he was aspiring to the highest rank to be enjoyed by any subject,
his moral misconduct was matter of public report and sufficient to
deter any woman from becoming his wife. He was also headstrong and
self-willed, “so difficult to guide,” sighed Noailles, “that he will
believe nobody; and as one who has spent his life in a tower, seeing
himself now in the enjoyment of entire liberty, cannot abstain from its
delights, having no fear of those things which may be placed before
him.”
To these causes, rather than to the romantic passion for Elizabeth
attributed to Courtenay by some other writers, Dr. Lingard attributes
Mary’s refusal to entertain the idea of becoming his wife. “In public
she observed that it was not for her honour to marry a subject, but to
her confidential friends she attributed the cause to the immorality of
Courtenay.”[201]
Her two English suitors disposed of, it remained to select a husband
from amongst foreign princes--the King of Denmark, the Prince of
Spain, the Infant of Portugal, the Prince of Piedmont, being all under
consideration. A few months ago Mary had been a negligible quantity
in the marriage market; she had now become one of the most desirable
matches in Europe. She was determined to follow in her choice the
advice of the Emperor; and the Emperor had hitherto abstained from
proffering it, contenting himself with negativing the candidature of
the son of the King of the Romans. It was not until September 20 that,
in answer to her repeated inquiries, he instructed his ambassadors
to offer her the hand of his son; requesting that the matter should
be kept secret, even from her ministers of State, until he had been
informed whether she was inclined to accept his suggestion.[202] The
contents of the Emperor’s despatch must have been communicated to
the Queen immediately before her coronation on September 30; but not
being as yet made public there was nothing to interfere with the loyal
rejoicings of the people, to whom the very idea of the Spanish match
would have been abhorrent.
Meantime the attitude of Elizabeth was increasing the desire of the
Catholic party that a direct heir should be born to the Catholic
Queen. The nation was insensibly dividing itself into two camps, and
the Protestant and Catholic parties eyed one another with suspicion,
each looking to the sister who shared its faith for support. The
enthusiasm displayed towards Elizabeth by a section of the people was
not conducive to the continuance of affectionate relations between
the Queen and the next heir to the throne, Pope Julius describing the
younger sister as being in the heart and mouth of every one. Elizabeth
was in a position of no little difficulty. She desired to continue
on good terms with the Queen; she was not willing to relinquish her
chief title to honour in Protestant eyes; and it is possible that
genuine religious sentiment, a sincere preference for the creed she
professed, may have added to her embarrassment. It may have been due
to conviction that she declined to bow to her sister’s wishes by
attending Mass, refusing so much as to be present at the ceremonial
which created Courtenay Earl of Devonshire. It was satisfactory to know
that Protestant England looked on and applauded. It was less pleasant
to hear that some of the Queen’s hot-headed friends, interpreting her
refusal as an act of disrespect to their mistress, had demanded--though
vainly--her arrest; and though on September 6 Noailles reported to
his master that on the previous Saturday and Sunday the Princess had
proved deaf to the arguments of preachers and the solicitations of
Councillors, and had gone so far as to make a rude reply to the last,
she suddenly changed her tactics, fell on her knees, weeping, before
Mary, and begged that books and teachers might be supplied to her, so
that she might perhaps see cause to alter the faith in which she had
been brought up. The expectation seems to have been promptly realised.
On September 8 she accompanied the Queen to Mass, and, expressing an
intention of establishing a chapel in her house, wrote to the Emperor
to ask permission to purchase the ornaments for it in Brussels.
It was a season of sudden conversions. Elizabeth was not the only
person who saw the wisdom of conforming in appearance or in sincerity
to the standard set up by the Queen. Hardinge, a chaplain of the
Duke of Suffolk’s--he must have succeeded to the post of the worthy
Haddon--had recognized his errors; and it is believed that to him a
letter of Lady Jane’s--though signed with her unmarried name--was
addressed. Printed in English, and abroad, perhaps through the
instrumentality of her former tutor, Aylmer, it is an epistle of
expostulation, reproof, and warning, couched in the violent language
of the time. To her “noble friend, newly fallen from the truth” she
writes, marvelling at him, and lamenting the case of one who, once the
lively member of Christ, was now the deformed imp of the devil, and
from the temple of God was become the kennel of Satan--with much more
in the same strain. It has not been recorded what effect, if any, the
missive produced upon the delinquent to whom it was addressed.
Elizabeth, for her part, had effectually made her peace with her
sister. The coronation, on October 10, found their relations restored
to a pleasant footing, and Elizabeth’s proper place at the ceremony was
assured to her. To Mary, a sad and lonely woman, the reconciliation
must have been welcome. To Elizabeth the material advantages of
standing on terms of affection with the Queen will have appealed more
strongly than motives of sentiment; and that her attitude was surmised
by those about her would seem to be shown by a curious incident
reported in the despatches of the imperial ambassador.
As the younger sister bore the crown to be placed upon Mary’s head, she
complained to M. de Noailles, who stood near, of its weight. It was
heavy, she said, and she was weary.
The Frenchman replied with a flippant jest, overheard by Charles’s
ambassador, though Noailles himself, perhaps convicted of indiscretion,
makes no mention of it in his account of the day’s proceedings. Let
Elizabeth have patience, he replied. When the crown should shortly be
upon her own head it would appear lighter.[203]
Outwardly all was as it should be. Mary held her sister’s hand in an
affectionate clasp, assigning to her the place of honour next her own
at the ensuing banquet, and court and nation looked on and were edified.
Gardiner, now not only Bishop of Winchester but Lord Chancellor,
had performed the rites of the coronation, in the absence of the
Archbishops, both in confinement. The Tower had been once more opening
its hospitable doors, and a fortnight earlier its resident diarist had
noted Cranmer’s arrival. “Item, the Bishop of Canterbury was brought
into the Tower as prisoner, and lodged in the Tower over the gate
anenst the water-gate, where the Duke of Northumberland lay before his
death.”
Nor was Cranmer the only churchman to find a lodging there. Doctor
Ridley had preceded him to the universal prison-house, and on the same
day that the Archbishop took up his residence in it “Master Latimer was
brought to the Tower prisoner; who at his coming said to one Rutter,
a warder there, ‘What, my old friend, how do you? I am now come to
be your neighbour again,’ and was lodged in the garden in Sir Thomas
Palmer’s lodging.”
Ominous quarters both! It was a day when the great fortress received,
and discharged, many guests.
If Cranmer had drawn his imprisonment upon himself, the imprudence
to which it was due did him honour. He had at first been treated by
Mary with an indulgence the more singular when it is remembered that
he had been the instrument of her mother’s divorce, and a strenuous
supporter of Lady Jane. Prudence would have dictated the adoption
on his part of a policy of silence; but, confined to his house at
Lambeth, and regarding with the bitterness inevitable in a man of his
convictions the steps in course of being taken for the restoration of
the ancient worship, the news that Mass had been once again celebrated
in Canterbury Cathedral, and that it was commonly reported that it
had been done with his consent and connivance, was too much for him.
Feeling the need of clearing himself from what he regarded as a
damaging imputation, he wrote and spread abroad a declaration of his
faith and opinions, adding to it a violent attack upon the rites of the
Catholic Church. By Mary and her advisers the challenge could scarcely
have been ignored; and it was this document, read to the people in the
streets, which was the cause of the Archbishop being called before the
Council and committed to the Tower on a charge of treason accompanied
by the spreading abroad of seditious libels.[204]
The Tower continued to be, in some sort, the centre of all that was
going forward. On September 27, two days before the coronation, Mary
had again visited the fortress whither she had so nearly escaped being
brought in quite another character and guise. Elizabeth came with her,
and she was attended by the whole Council--just as they had, not three
months before, attended upon Jane, the innocent usurper. And somewhere
in the great dark building the little Twelfth-night Queen must have
listened to the pealing of the joy-bells and to the acclamations of the
people who had kept so ominous a silence when she herself had made her
entry. Perhaps young Guilford Dudley too, who a week or two before had
been accorded “the liberty of the leads on Beacham’s Tower,” may have
stood above, catching a glimpse of the show, and remembering the day
when he and his wife had their boy-and-girl quarrel, because she would
not make him a King.
The two questions of the hour were those relating to the Queen’s
marriage and to matters of religion. When Parliament met on October 5,
the news of the Spanish match had not been announced, and the bills
of chief interest passed were one dealing with the important point of
the validity of Katherine of Aragon’s marriage, and a second, which,
avoiding any discussion of the Papal supremacy, the only thoroughly
unpopular article of the Catholic creed, cancelled recent legislation
on ecclesiastical matters, and restored the ritual in use during the
last year of Henry’s reign. The other important measure carried in this
session was the attainder of Cranmer, Lady Jane and her husband, and
Sir Ambrose Dudley.
So far as Lady Jane was concerned the step was purely formal, intended
to serve as a warning to her friends, and it was understood on all
hands that a pardon would be granted to the guiltless figure-head of
the conspiracy. Yet to a nervous child, not yet seventeen, there may
well have been something terrifying in the sentence hanging over her,
and it seems to have been about this time that she addressed a letter
to her father which could scarcely have been otherwise conceived had
she expected in truth to suffer the penalty due to treason.
[Illustration:
From an etching by W. Hollar. Photo by W. A. Mansell & Co.
THE TOWER OF LONDON.]
“If I may without offence rejoice in mine own mishap,” she wrote,
“meseems in this I may account myself blessed, that washing mine hands
with the innocency of my fact, my guiltless blood may cry before
the Lord, mercy, mercy to the innocent. And yet I must acknowledge
that being constrained, and, as you wot well enough, continually
assailed, in taking upon me I seemed to consent, and therein offended
the Queen and her laws, yet do I assuredly trust that this mine offence
towards God is much the less, in that being in so royal an estate as I
was, mine enforced honour never agreed with mine innocent heart.”[205]
The trial was held on November 13, on which day Cranmer, with Guilford,
and his brother, and Lady Jane, were all conducted on foot to the
Guildhall to answer the charge of treason.
The Archbishop led the way, followed by young Dudley. After them came
Lady Jane, a childish figure of woe, dressed in black, with a French
hood, also black, a book bound in black velvet hanging at her side, and
another in her hand.
Her condemnation was a foregone conclusion, and, pleading guilty, she
was sentenced to death, by the axe or by fire, according to the old
brutal law dealing with a woman convicted of treason. As she returned
to the Tower a demonstration took place in her honour, not unlikely
to be productive of some uneasiness to those in power, and little
calculated to serve her cause.
The London populace were more favourably disposed towards her in
misfortune, than in her brief period of prosperity. The sight of the
forlorn pair, still no more than boy and girl, touched and moved the
multitude, and crowds accompanied them to their place of captivity. It
is said that this was the solitary occasion upon which she and Guilford
Dudley met during their imprisonment.
Another cause, besides simple pity, was perhaps responsible for the
tenderness displayed towards the Queen’s rival. A week or two before
the trial the news of the Spanish match had been made known to the
public, and may have had the effect of suggesting doubts as to the
wisdom of the enthusiastic welcome given to Mary. At the beginning of
November the affair had been undecided, and Gardiner was telling the
Emperor’s envoy candidly that, if the Queen asked his advice, he would
counsel her to choose an Englishman for her husband. The nation, he
added, was deeply prejudiced against foreign domination, especially in
the case of Spaniards, and the proposed union would also produce war
with France.
Mary’s mind, however, was made up, nor had she any intention of being
swayed by Gardiner’s advice. On the night of October 30 she took
the singular step of summoning the ambassador, Simon Renard, to her
apartment; when, in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, and after
repeating on her knees the _Veni Creator_, she gave him her promise to
wed the Prince of Spain. In the face of the curious determination thus
shown to bind herself by a contract irrevocable in her own eyes, it
is strange to find historians attributing to her a continued leaning
towards Courtenay.
When the fact got abroad that the Emperor’s son was destined to
become the Queen’s husband, London thrilled with indignation; whilst
Parliament made its sentiments plain by means of a deputation which,
in an address containing an entreaty that she would marry, expressed
a hope that her choice would fall upon an Englishman. But Mary was a
Tudor. Dispensing with the customary medium of the Chancellor, she
gave her reply in person. Thanking the petitioners for their zeal,
she declared herself disposed to act upon their advice and to take a
husband. It was, however, for herself alone to select one, according to
her inclination, and for the good of her kingdom.
Simon Renard, reporting the scene, observed that her speech had been
applauded by the nobles present, Arundel informing the Chancellor
in jest that he had been deprived of his office, since the Queen
had undertaken the functions belonging to it. In the pleasantry the
Emperor’s envoy detected a warning that should Gardiner continue his
opposition to the match he would not long retain his present post.[206]
The Bishop yielded. He may have agreed with Renard. At all events, the
Queen being determined, and recognising that he was unable to deter
her from the measure upon which she had decided, he took the prudent
step of putting himself on her side. His opposition removed, Renard was
able to inform his master, on December 17, that Mary had received him
in open daylight, had informed him that the necessity for secrecy was
at an end, and that she regarded her marriage as a thing definitely and
irrevocably fixed.[207]