In consequence of the revival of industries, money at once began to circulate more freely, and this naturally exercised a beneficial effect on the nation at large, long the prey of poverty and discontent. Those only had been satisfied who were enriched by the plunder of churches and monasteries. The monopoly of land having been one of Henry’s chief objects in seizing Church property, every stray piece of waste ground was enclosed and rack-rented, so that the poor man, who had hitherto been able to keep a cow and a few sheep, could not afterwards so much as find food for a goose or a hen. The fishing population, since days of abstinence from meat were no longer obligatory, suffered as much as the country people, for the fisheries declined, through want of a market to dispose of the smack-loads with which the ports were glutted. The suppression of the religious houses affected the arts and crafts throughout the country. Nine years afterwards, at the beginning of Edward’s reign, it was found necessary to deal with vagrancy by legislation. The indigent had become the great bulk of the nation, while those who had grown rich with the wealth which had formerly been distributed at the convent gates, thought of nothing less than of feeding the hungry. Stringent poor-laws were enacted, but failed to meet the difficulty. A vagrant might be pressed into the service of any person who met him on the King’s highway. If he refused to do the work assigned to him, how vile soever it might be, he was branded with the letter V, and adjudged a slave for two years, to be fed on bread and water and refuse meat. A first attempt at escape was punished by the slave being branded with an S, after which he was kept a slave for life. A second attempt resulted in a felon’s death. From all this Mary delivered her people. Poverty under her was no longer considered a crime, and if there is one special reason more than another for honouring her memory it is her love and care for the poor and afflicted, of which we shall presently see many examples.[343] But besides the able-bodied vagrants, a vast number of feeble, halt, blind and wretched vagabonds lay and crept begging in the miry streets of London and Westminster. Money, urgently needed to reanimate commerce, and pay the debts of the Crown, had been squandered in the erection of expensive public buildings. In Sorranzo’s report on England in 1553, the Venetian ambassador says of London, that on the banks of the river were many fine palaces, making a grand show, but that the rest of the city was much disfigured by the ruins of a multitude of churches and monasteries, belonging heretofore to friars and nuns. The population was dense, numbering 180,000 souls.[344] Mary found, not merely an impoverished exchequer, but a mass of royal debts. In 1551 Edward’s liabilities had amounted to £241,179 14s. 10d.; in 1553 they still exceeded £190,000.[345] Immediately on her accession, the Queen acknowledged herself answerable for the salaries, three years in arrear, of all the Crown officials, although she had no longer a private purse; and while one royal proclamation restored a depreciated currency, setting forth the Queen’s “tender care to her loving subjects,” adding how sensible she was of “the great intolerable charges had come to her subjects by base money,”[346] another remitted two odious and oppressive taxes levied by the late Parliament. These were subsidies of four shillings in the pound on land, and two shillings and eightpence on goods, a burden that had weighed heavily on the small merchants and farmers.
Mary’s scrupulous justice and honesty left little wherewith to make a show of generosity. It had ever been the custom for English monarchs to reward those who had fought in their quarrel, with rich gifts of land and money, but clamour as her friends might, the Queen would not make grants of Church property, and there were few other resources at her command. “She is so poor,” said de Noailles, “that her want of money is apparent, even to the dishes put upon her table.”
Her choice of Gardiner as Chancellor was fortunate for the rehabilitation of the public finances. His ability in this direction was undeniable, his integrity known to all, and while he lived, however low the state of her coffers, Mary was never in debt. An Englishman to a fault, rough, uncouth and frank, often to incivility, Gardiner was liked by few. Both the French and Imperial ambassadors hated him cordially. Renard added distrust to his relations with him, remembering the active part which he had taken in the divorce of Queen Katharine, and in the declaration of the royal supremacy. He could not believe in the sincerity of the man, who was in reality burning with desire to prove it. But apart from his past history, Gardiner’s actual attitude was an obstacle to imperial interests in England. His patriotism, no less than his honesty and common sense, led him to discern that no matrimonial alliance, however brilliant, would be acceptable to the nation, if contracted with a foreigner. Fear and abhorrence of any “foreign potentate” having jurisdiction in this realm had become part and parcel of that insular prejudice, which had sprung up since the separation from Rome, a prejudice which Mary underrated, if she did not entirely ignore it, while Renard, to make the situation acute, was entrusted with a secret mission from the Emperor to bring about a marriage between her and his son, the Prince of Spain. There were henceforth three antagonistic parties in the State—the Spanish, the loyal English headed by Gardiner, and the disloyal, leagued secretly with the French.
To de Noailles, polished, urbane and ceremonious, an ultra Frenchman, the Chancellor was peculiarly obnoxious. Gardiner had always had a reputation for want of courtesy, and on his release, the French ambassador was the first to observe that imprisonment had not civilised him.[347] But if these two, who were working to some extent for the same ends,[348] had joined forces, they might together have defeated the Emperor’s schemes. They were however natural enemies, the invincible element of deceit and treachery in de Noailles revolting Gardiner, even more than his own want of tact disgusted the Frenchman. Pugnacious, outspoken, and strong in the integrity of his intention, the Chancellor held his own in the Council, although he was opposed throughout by Arundel and Paget, who favoured the imperial policy. But highly as she esteemed him for his probity, he was powerless to influence the Queen. The subject of her marriage exercised the minds of all parties in the State. Even her ladies talked to her of nothing else, and Mary herself, who had hitherto preferred to remain unmarried, acquiesced in the general understanding, that it was for the common weal she should now choose a husband. Before her public entry into London, Renard had secretly waited upon her at New Hall, to treat of the matter. She had told him, that before succeeding to the throne, she had resolved to end her days as a celibate, but that now another duty had been imposed on her. She was resolved, she said, to follow the Emperor’s advice, and to choose the consort whom he approved, for after God, she desired to obey him as a father. Only she besought him to consider her age, and not to press her to treat of matrimony with any whom she had not seen and heard. She gave Renard to understand that she had not been deceived by the Emperor’s feigned advice to her ambassadors at Brussels, that she should marry one of her own nobles, and that she even suspected them of having interpolated the sentence in which it was contained, to suit their own inclinations. On receiving Renard’s letter, containing an account of this audience, Charles replied that the Queen plainly showed by what she had said, that she inclined towards marriage with a foreigner.[349]
A few days later (according to de Noailles, on the 12th August) Mary repeated formally what she had already said to Renard, that for State reasons she had resolved to marry, and that seeing no suitable match in her own kingdom, she would form an alliance with a foreigner, trusting that the Emperor would propose a Catholic, and arrange for her to see and speak with the aspirant to her hand. She stipulated earnestly that he should not be too young.[350]
Among the prisoners already mentioned as having been liberated on her accession was Edward Courtenay, son of the Marquis of Exeter. Descended like his cousin, Reginald Pole, from the royal family, through his mother, Courtenay possessed advantages of birth sufficient to justify his being put forward as a candidate for the Queen’s favour; but in spite of all that has been written on the subject, it is more than doubtful, whether Mary, even for a moment, thought seriously of marrying him. With the whole Renard correspondence before us, it seems certain that from the beginning she had placed her destiny in the hands of the Emperor, and was resolved to abide by his choice.
Courtenay was handsome and fascinating in appearance, of noble carriage and distinguished manners; at the time of his release from the Tower, he was twenty-six years old, fourteen of which had been spent in prison. The Queen, as if she could not do enough to compensate him for the long injustice he had suffered, lavished honours and benefits upon him. She restored to him the earldom of Devon, and his confiscated estates of the marquisate of Exeter; and de Noailles surmised that, had he continued to deserve favours, the dukedom of York was in store for him.[351] His mother was made first lady of the court, and slept with the Queen. Courtenay became for a time the idol of the people, who would gladly have seen him married to their sovereign; but the idea probably originated with Gardiner, who had conceived an affection for the young man during their common imprisonment. He did his utmost to induce Mary to marry him, and had Courtenay proved himself worthy, and had the Chancellor and de Noailles worked in concert, she might possibly have raised him to the throne, their united action overcoming the Emperor’s influence, but there was no foundation for de Noailles’ absurd theory that she was in love with him. Scarcely was he out of the Tower, than intoxicated with his first sweet draught of freedom, he abandoned himself to every kind of dissipation, and frequented the loosest company. London echoed with tales of his excesses.
Even in those early days, his name was as often coupled with Elizabeth’s as with the Queen’s, and at the beginning of August, the imperial ambassadors told Mary that Courtenay and her sister were in collusion. They were careful also to keep her informed of his new way of life, which caused her great indignation, though de Noailles persisted in declaring that she was so deeply enamoured of him, that she would put up with all his licentiousness, and marry him in spite of everything. Unfounded as these assertions were, they gained considerable credence at home and abroad, and Prosper de Sainte Croix wrote to Cardinal del Monte, that it was very likely that the Queen of England would decide on Courtenay as a husband, as she had lately given him a diamond worth 16,000 crowns, which King Henry used to wear. But while Mary declared in public, that it was not to her honour to marry a subject, she told her friends privately that his immorality would alone prove a sufficient barrier. The French ambassador was not so blinded by his illusion, as not to perceive that Courtenay was fast ruining whatever prospects he might have had, and with facile diplomacy he caught the ball at the rebound, and still carried on the game in the interests of France. If Mary’s disappointed suitor were not to be a convenient foil to Spain, by marrying the Queen, he might still be valuable as a name to conjure with in connection with Elizabeth. If only he were a little more enterprising and a trifle less timid, Courtenay and Elizabeth might well lay themselves out for popularity among the discontented Protestants. De Noailles entertained him at a banquet, under cover of his belonging to the Queen’s Privy Council, flattered and encouraged him, and let fall a few tentative words, to the effect that he should push his fortunes. A few days later, Courtenay was seen leaving the French ambassador’s house disguised, at midnight.