Mary lost no time in acquainting the Emperor and the French King with her resolve to bring back Catholic worship. Henry congratulated her on her intention, and urged her to proceed at once; but Charles advised caution, and told her to pause until she had obtained the consent of Parliament.[316] From Rome came still other counsel. If Mary was strangely unconscious of the change that had come over the country since the days of her childhood, at the heart of Christendom a still greater optimism prevailed. Reginald Pole wrote to her, urging not only the reconciliation of her kingdom with the Holy See, but also the restitution of Church lands. He congratulated her on the manner of her accession, and trusted that as she had been tutored in the school of God how to rule herself, her realm would become a mirror of good order and true justice, to the comfort of all good men.[317] He also wrote to the Emperor, representing that as the principal foundation of her right to the Crown rested on the legitimacy of her mother’s marriage, which depended on the Papal dispensation of Julius II.; by deferring the re-establishment of Papal authority her right was in consequence deferred also.[318]
Again he wrote to Mary herself, drawing attention to her own spiritual danger and to the shipwrecked condition of the English nation, “for the Queen, or at least England, was assuredly shipwrecked, when she threw herself into the sea of this century; and having drawn a picture of the danger, her Majesty will judge whether it is the time to deliberate, or rather to act as ordained and prescribed her by divine and human counsel”.[319]
Pole was not alone in advising prompt and swift action. All over the continent the same ignorance prevailed concerning the fact that England was not the same country as in the days when Henry VIII. broke away from Rome, and this mistaken notion as to Mary’s difficulties was not strange, seeing that the Queen herself was still peacefully unaware of more than half of them. The Papal nuncio in France, writing to the Cardinal del Monte, said: “From England comes the news that the Queen is about to enter London, beloved and revered by the people, not only as Queen but as a saint. Her sister has arrived, and her Majesty caused her to be received most honourably, a thousand horses with green and white velvet trappings being sent to meet her. All the populace cry out that Northumberland, Suffolk and Jane should have their heads cut off. It is believed that they poisoned the late King. As soon as the Queen arrives in London, it is supposed that she will have the marriage between her mother and father declared valid, and she is said to desire it very much, and wills it to be declared by all Parliaments and statutes, so that her mother’s and her own honour may be fully satisfied. Another of her intentions is to re-establish religion under the obedience of his Holiness, and the feeling of the realm is with her.” This was all true enough, but to complete the picture, he should have added that the Puritan Londoners were violently opposed to the old religion, that Elizabeth was as hostile as she dared to be, and was already looked on as the champion of the Protestant party, that the French ambassador played into their hands, and was ready for any conspiracy.
The advice of the Emperor was preferred to all other. Next to Mary’s devotion to her faith was her loyalty to the Hapsburgs. She had grown up in the belief that Charles was her best friend and only refuge; and now whenever she considered herself free to choose an independent policy, she chose to follow his advice. Indeed, it is scarcely thinkable, that at thirty-seven she should have awoke from the dream of a lifetime, by the mere fact of ascending the throne. In many ways, the Emperor advised her well. He had vast experience of the kind of religious revolution that was agitating the greater part of Europe. He had been twice in England, but more perhaps by his genius for government, and his habit of working out national problems on paper, than by his actual knowledge of the English people, the knowledge that comes from contact, did he realise the amount of pressure that could with any chance of success be brought to bear upon them. So long as he applied general principles in his advice to Mary, so long was his guidance of service to her; but where his own interests were concerned, and those of the empire, he ceased to consider her advantage at all, and involved her in a policy that ultimately became her ruin. If he had so willed, she would have gone to the block cheerfully for the principles for which More and Fisher died; but her martyrdom would have availed the Emperor nothing. Rather would it have embroiled him further with Henry, whose friendship he was just then anxious to obtain. Therefore he did not scruple to entangle her conscience in the meshes of an indefensible sophistry. When Edward’s Council had brought the country to so miserable a condition that the Government, neither feared nor respected abroad, dared not try conclusions with him, it was a small matter for him to declare that he had rather Mary died on the scaffold than abandon one jot or tittle of her faith. Having therefore been the arbiter of her destiny during the years of her bondage, it was not likely that he would cease to exercise his influence when the majesty of England was centred in her person.
Although Mary had wished Edward’s obsequies to be performed in the Catholic manner, when Charles represented to her that, as her brother had died professing the new, reformed religion, she could not consistently have him buried as a Catholic, she yielded to Cranmer’s objection to having a Popish Mass said over his body. The Archbishop of Canterbury therefore conducted his funeral, in accordance with the established form, in Westminster Abbey, the Queen, at the same time, with 300 of the nobility assisting at a solemn Dirge for his soul in St. John’s Chapel in the Tower. Elizabeth refused to be present at the Mass of requiem,[320] and Renard pressed Mary to take measures against her, declaring that her profession of Protestantism was a decoy, to attract to herself the malcontents, and to form a party in the State dangerous to peace and security.[321] After events proved the truth of this opinion. Mary replied that she was thinking of sending her sister away from the court; but, meanwhile, Elizabeth still remained, and the Queen did her best to convert her.
The bulk of the nation heartily welcomed the return of the old worship, but London was Protestant to the backbone. Something like a riot took place on the occasion of an unauthorised celebration of Mass, in a church near the Horse-market, and when Gilbert Bourne, Archdeacon of St. Paul’s, attempted to preach at Paul’s Cross on the 13th August fresh disturbances arose. The occasion was unfortunate, his theme dealing with the unjust imprisonment of Bonner; and the preacher’s language became somewhat inflammatory. “In this very place, upon this very day, four years afore passed,” cried Bourne, “was the Bishop of London, who is here present, most unjustly cast into the vile dungeon of the Marshalsea, among thieves.”[322] Bonner was hated by the Londoners on account of his uncompromising Papistry, and for what they considered his want of tact, in his conduct towards Ridley, who had been intruded into his see, when Edward deprived him for religion, and whom he now replaced. The sight of him, as he sat listening to Bourne’s panegyric, incensed the partisans of Ridley. As the preacher went on, low murmurs grew into fierce cries, and at last a voice called out, “Pull him down!” A dagger was thrown at Bourne, hit a post of the pulpit, and rebounded a great way. With difficulty Bourne was conveyed to a place of safety in St. Paul’s School.[323] The following Sunday, a detachment of the Queen’s guard was sent to protect the preacher,[324] but after this event, few came to listen to the discourses at Paul’s Cross, and the Lord Mayor was ordered “to make the ancients of the companies resort to the sermons, lest the preacher should be discouraged by a small audience”.[325]
These riots produced the first tightening of the reins of government, a measure which only led to further irritation. A royal proclamation was issued, which although testifying to Mary’s benignity, describes the tumultuous state of the metropolis. A part of it ran thus: “First, her Majesty being presently, by the only goodness of God, settled in her just possession of the imperial crown of this realm, and other dominions thereunto belonging, cannot now hide that religion which God and the world knoweth she hath ever professed from her infancy hitherto: which as her Majesty is minded to observe and maintain for herself, by God’s grace, during her time, so doth her Highness much desire and would be glad the same were of all her subjects quietly and charitably embraced. And yet she doth signify unto all her Majesty’s loving subjects, that of her most gracious disposition and clemency, her Highness mindeth not to compel any her said subjects thereunto, unto such time as further order, by common assent may be taken therein: forbidding nevertheless all her subjects of all degrees, at their perils to move seditions or stir unquietness in her people, by interpreting the laws of this realm after their brains and fantasies, but quietly to continue for the time till (as before is said) further order may be taken; and therefore willeth and straitly chargeth and commandeth all her said good loving subjects, to live together in quiet sort and christian charity, leaving those new found devilish terms of papist or heretic and such like, and applying their whole care, study and travail to live in the fear of God, exercising their conversations in such charitable and godly doing, as their lives may indeed express that great hunger and thirst of God’s glory and holy word, which by rash talk and words many have pretended; and in so doing they shall best please God, and live without danger of the laws, and maintain the tranquillity of the realm,” etc., etc.[326]
This was published on the 18th August, but scarcely succeeded in quieting men’s minds. Unauthorised Masses were constantly being said in prominent places of worship hitherto given over to the services of the established religion. Machyn’s Diary records the fact that on “the xxiii day of August began the mass at Saint Nicholas Colabay, goodly sung in Latin, and tapers and set on the altar, and a cross, in old Fish Street. Item the next day a goodly mass sung at St. Nicholas Wyllms, in Latin, in Bread Street.”[327]
To many, these things appeared quite otherwise than “goodly,” and there was much murmuring at street corners and in taverns, angry discussions that might easily end in brawls; and the forbidden words “papist” and “heretic” were bandied about without much restraint. Consequently, every householder was exhorted to “keep his children, apprentices and other servants in such order and awe, as they follow their work the week days, and keep their parish-churches the holy day, and otherwise to be suffered to attempt nothing tending to the violation of common peace, and that for the contrary, every one of them to stand charged for his children and servants”.
Meanwhile, all eyes were fixed on Cranmer. It is more than probable, that if he had remained quiescent he would have been suffered to retire into private life, or to betake himself to the continent like so many others of his opinions. Strype says that he was called before the Council at the beginning of August, to answer for his share in the late rebellion; that he was severely reprimanded, and ordered to confine himself to his palace at Lambeth. But this statement is unsupported by any evidence. There are no minutes of the Privy Council between the 2nd and the 8th August, on which day Edward’s funeral took place, when certainly Cranmer was not a prisoner either on parole or otherwise. Strype seems to have been confused by a letter from the Archbishop to Cecil, dated 14th August, in which he says that he has been to court. This appearance in the Queen’s presence would account for the report that was immediately circulated, to the effect that he had pledged himself to Mary, to say Mass for her.[328] Disagreeable as the rumour must have been to him in his position as reformer, worse was to follow. Mass had once more been said in Canterbury Cathedral, and Cranmer was accredited by the public voice with having said it. This was more than he could endure, and fired with indignation, he took the first irrevocable step towards his doom. Seizing his pen, he wrote the celebrated Declaration which, if the Archbishop of Canterbury has any determining voice in the doctrine of the Established Church of England, should for ever settle the question whether that Church teaches belief in the Sacrifice of the Mass or not.