The Reign of Mary Tudor

by James Anthony Froude

Mary, except for the cautious support of Paget, stood otherwise alone coquetting with her fancy, and played upon by the skilful Renard. The queen and the ambassador were incessantly together, and Philip was the never-tiring subject of conversation between them. She talked of his disposition. She had heard, she said, that he was proud; that he was inferior to his father in point of ability; and then he was young, and she had been told sad stories about him; if he was of warm temperament, he would not suit her at all, she said, considering the age at which she had arrived.[146] Moreover, when she was married, she must obey as God commanded; her husband, perhaps, might wish to place Spaniards in authority in England, and she would have to refuse; and that he would not like. To all of which, being the fluttering of the caught fly, Renard would answer that his highness was more like an angel than a man; his youth was in his favour, for he might live to see his child of age, and England had had too much experience of minorities. Life, he added remarkably, was shorter than it used to be; sixty was now a great age for a king; and as the world was, men were as mature at thirty as in the days of his grandfather they were considered at forty.[147] Then touching the constant sore—"her majesty," he said, "had four enemies, who would never rest till they had destroyed her or were themselves destroyed—the heretics, the friends of the late Duke of Northumberland, the courts of France and Scotland, and, lastly, her sister Elizabeth. Her subjects were restless, turbulent, and changeable as the ocean of which they were so fond;[148] the sovereigns of England had been only able to rule with a hand of iron, and with severities which had earned them the name of tyrants;[149] they had not spared the blood royal in order to secure their thrones, and she too must act as they had acted, leaning for support, meanwhile, on the arm of a powerful prince."

To these dark hints Mary ever listened eagerly—meantime she was harassed painfully from another quarter.

Reginald Pole, as might have been expected from his temperament, could ill endure the delay of his return to England. The hesitation of the queen and the objections of the emperor were grounded upon arguments which he assured himself were fallacious; the English nation, he continued to insist, were devoted to the Holy See; so far from being himself unpopular, the Cornish in the rebellion under Edward had petitioned for his recall, and had even designated him by the forbidden name of cardinal; they loved him and they longed for him; and, regarding himself as the chosen instrument of Providence to repair the iniquities of Henry VIII., he held the obstructions to his return not only to be mistaken, but to be impious. The duty of the returning prodigal was to submit; to lay aside all earthly considerations—to obey God, God's vicegerent the pope, and himself the pope's representative.

Mendoza had been sent by Charles to meet Pole on his way to Flanders, and reason him into moderation. In return the legate wrote himself to Charles's confessor, commanding him to explain to his master the sin which he was committing. "The objection to his going to England," as Pole understood, "was the supposed danger of an outbreak". Were the truth as the emperor feared, the queen's first duty would be, nevertheless, to God, her own soul, and the souls of the millions of her subjects who were perishing in separation from the church; for no worldly policy or carnal respect ought she to defer for a moment to apply a remedy to so monstrous a calamity.[150] But the danger was imaginary—or, rather, such danger as there was, arose from the opposite cause. The right of the queen to the throne did not rest on an act of parliament; it rested on her birth as the lawful child of the lawful marriage between Henry and Catherine of Arragon. Parliament, he was informed, would affirm the marriage legitimate, if nothing was said about the pope; but, unless the pope's authority was first recognised, parliament would only stultify itself; the papal dispensation alone made valid a connection which, if the pope had no power to dispense, was incestuous, and the offspring of it illegitimate. God had made the peaceful settlement of the kingdom dependent on submission to the Holy See,[151] and for parliament to interfere and give an opinion upon the subject would be but a fresh act of schism and disobedience.

The original letter, being in our own State Paper Office, was probably given by the confessor to Charles, and by Charles sent over to England. Most logical it was; so logical that it quite outwitted the intention of the writer. While it added to the queen's distress, it removed, nevertheless, all objections which might have been raised by the anti-papal party against the act to legitimatise her. So long as there was a fear that, by a repeal of the Act of Divorce between her father and mother, the pope's authority might indirectly be admitted, some difficulty was to be anticipated; as a new assertion of English independence, it could be carried with unanimous alacrity.

What parliament would or would not consent to, however, would soon cease to be a mystery. The advice of the emperor on the elections had been, for the most part, followed. It was obvious, indeed, that a sovereign who was unable to control her council was in no position to dictate to constituencies. There were no circulars to the lords-lieutenant of counties, such as Northumberland had issued, or such as Mary herself, a year later, was able to issue; while the unusual number of members returned to the Lower House—four hundred and thirty, it will be seen, voted on one great occasion—shows that the issue of writs had been on the widest scale. On the whole, it was, perhaps, the fairest election which had taken place for many years. In the House of Lords the ejection of the Reforming bishops and the restoration of their opponents—the death, imprisonment, or disgrace of three noblemen on the Reforming side, and the return to public life of the peers who, in the late reign, had habitually absented themselves, had restored a conservative majority. How the representatives of the people would conduct themselves was the anxious and all-agitating question. The queen, however, could console herself with knowing that Protestantism, as a system of belief, had made its way chiefly among the young; the votes were with the middle-aged and the old.

The session opened on the 5th of October with the ancient form, so long omitted, of the mass of the Holy Ghost. Two Protestant bishops, Taylor of Lincoln and Harley of Hereford, who had been left as yet undisturbed in their sees, on the service commencing, rose and went out; they were not allowed to return. Two prebends, Alexander Nowel and Doctor Tregonwell had been returned to the Lower House; Nowel as a member of Convocation was declared ineligible;[152] Tregonwell, being a layman, was on consideration allowed to retain his seat. These were the only ejections which can be specifically traced, and the silence of those who were interested in making the worst of Mary's conduct, may be taken to prove that they did not know of any more.[153] The Houses, purged of these elements, then settled to their work; and, plunging at once into the great question of the time, the Commons came to an instant understanding that the lay owners of church lands should not be disturbed in their tenures under any pretext whatsoever.

Commendone, on returning to Rome, had disregarded his obligations to secrecy, and had related all that the queen had said to him in the open consistory; from the consistory the account travelled back to England, and arrived inopportunely at the opening of parliament. The fatal subject of the lands had been spoken of, and the queen had expressed to Commendone her intention to restore them, if possible, to the church. The council cross-questioned her, and she could neither deny her words nor explain them away; the Commons first, the Lords immediately after, showed her that, whatever might be her own hopes or wishes, their minds on that point were irrevocably fixed.[154]

No less distinct were the opinions expressed in the Lower House on the Papacy. The authority of the pope, as understood in England, was not a question of doctrine, nor was the opposition to it of recent origin. It had been thrown off after a struggle which had lasted for centuries, and a victory[155] so hardly won was not to be lightly parted with. Lord Paget warned the queen that Pole's name must not be so much as mentioned, or some unwelcome resolution about him would be immediately passed;[156] and she was in hourly dread that before they would consent to anything, they would question her whether she would or would not maintain the royal supremacy.[157] On the other hand, if no difficulties were raised about the pope or the church lands, the preliminary discussion, both among Lords and Commons, showed a general disposition to re-establish religion in the condition in which Henry left it—provided, that is to say, no penalties were to attach to nonconformity; and the Houses were ready also to take the step so much deprecated by Pole, and pass a measure legitimatising the queen, provided no mention was to be made of the papal dispensation. Some difference of opinion on the last point had shown itself in the House of Commons,[158] but the legate's ingenuity had removed all serious obstacles.

Again parliament seemed determined that the Act of Succession, and the will of Henry VIII., should not be tampered with, to the disfavour of Elizabeth. It is singular that Renard, and probably, therefore, Mary, were unaware of the position in which Elizabeth was placed towards the crown. They imagined that her only title was as a presumptively legitimate child; that if the Act of Divorce between Catherine of Arragon and Henry was repealed, she must then, as a bastard, be cut off from her expectations. Had Elizabeth's prospects been liable to be affected by the legitimisation of her sister, the queen would have sued as vainly for it as she sued afterwards in favour of her husband. With unmixed mortification Renard learnt that Elizabeth, in the eye of the law, had been as illegitimate as Mary, and that her place in the order of succession rested on her father's will. He flattered himself, at first, that Henry's dispositions could be set aside;[159] but he very soon found that there was no present hope of it.