The Reign of Mary Tudor

by James Anthony Froude

An embassy was immediately announced as to be sent from Flanders. Count Egmont, M. de Courières, the Count de Lalaing, and M. de Nigry, Chancellor of the Golden Fleece, were coming over as plenipotentiaries of the emperor. Secret messengers went off to Rome to hasten the dispensations—a dispensation for Mary to marry her cousin, and a dispensation which also was found necessary permitting the ceremony to be performed by a bishop in a state of schism. The marriage could be solemnised at once on their arrival, the ambassadors standing as Philip's representatives, while Sir Philip Hoby, Bonner, Bedford, and Lord Derby would go to Spain to receive the prince's oaths, and escort him to England. Again and again the queen pressed haste. Ash-Wednesday fell on the 6th of February, and in Lent she might not marry. Renard assured her that the prince should be in her arms before Septuagesima, and all her trials would be over. The worst danger which he now anticipated was from some unpleasant collision which might arise after the prince's landing; and he had advised the emperor to have the Spaniards who would form the retinue selected for their meekness. They would meet with insolence from the English, which they would not endure, if they had the spirit to resent it; their dispositions, therefore, must be mild and forgiving.[189]

And yet Renard could not hide from himself, and the lords did not hide from Mary, that their consent was passive only; that their reluctance was vehement as ever. Bedford said, if he went to Spain, he must go without attendance, for no one would accompany him. Lord Derby refused to be one of the ambassadors, and with Sir Edward Waldegrave and Sir Edward Hastings told the queen that he would leave her service if she persisted. The seditious pamphlets which were scattered everywhere created a vague terror in the court, and the court ladies wept and lamented in the queen's presence. The council in a body again urged her to abandon her intention. The peers met again to consider the marriage articles. Gardiner read them aloud, and Lord Windsor, a dull Brutus, who till then had never been known to utter a reasonable word, exclaimed, amidst general applause, "You have told us fine things of the queen, and the prince, and the emperor; what security have we that words are more than words?" Corsairs from Brest and Rochelle hovered in the mouth of the Channel to catch the couriers going to and fro between Spain and London and Brussels, and to terrify Philip with the danger of the passage. The Duke of Suffolk's brother and the Marquis of Winchester had been heard to swear that they would set upon him when he landed; and Renard began to doubt whether the alliance, after all, was worth the risk attending it.[190] Mary, however, brave in the midst of her perplexities, vowed that she would relinquish her hopes of Philip only with her life. An army of spies watched Elizabeth day and night, and the emperor, undeterred by Renard's hesitation, encouraged the queen's resolution. There could be no conspiracy as yet, Charles said, which could not be checked with judicious firmness; and dangerous persons could be arrested and made secure. A strong hand could do much in England, as was proved by the success for a time of the late Duke of Northumberland.[191]

The advice fell in with Mary's own temperament; she had already been acting in the spirit of it. A party of Protestants met in St. Matthew's Church on the publication of the acts of the late session, to determine how far they would obey them. Ten or twelve were seized on the spot, and two were hanged out of hand.[192] The queen told Hastings and Waldegrave that she would endure no opposition; they should obey her or they should leave the council. She would raise a few thousand men, she said, to keep her subjects in order, and she would have a thousand Flemish horse among them. There was a difficulty about ways and means; as fast as money came into the treasury she had paid debts with it, and, as far as her means extended, she had replaced chalices and roods in the parish churches. But, if she was poor, five millions of gold had just arrived in Spain from the New World; and, as the emperor suggested, her credit was good at Antwerp from her honesty. Lazarus Tucker came again to the rescue. In November, Lazarus provided £50,000 for her at fourteen per cent. In January she required £100,000 more, and she ordered Gresham to find it for her at low interest or high.[193] Fortunately for Mary the project of a standing army could not be carried out by herself alone, and the passive resistance of the council saved her from commencing the attempt. Neither Irish mercenaries, nor Flemish, nor Welsh, as, two months after she was proposing to herself, were permitted to irritate England into madness.

While Mary was thus buffeting with the waves, on the 23rd, Count Egmont and his three companions arrived at Calais. The French had threatened to intercept the passage, and four English ships-of-war had been ordered to be in waiting as their escort: these ships, however, had not left the Thames, being detained either by weather, as the admiral pretended, or by the ill-humour of the crews, who swore they would give the French cruisers small trouble, should they present themselves.[194] On Christmas-day ill-looking vessels were hanging in mid-channel, off Calais harbour, but the ambassadors were resolved to cross at all risks. They stole over in the darkness on the night of the 26th, and were at Dover by nine in the morning. Their retinue, a very large one, was sent on at once to London; snow was on the ground, and the boys in the streets saluted the first comers with showers of balls. The ambassadors followed the next day, and were received in silence, but without active insult. The emperor's choice of persons for his purpose had been judicious. The English ministers intended to be offensive, but they were disarmed by the courtesy of Egmont, who charmed every one. In ten days the business connected with the treaty was concluded. The treaty itself was sent to Brussels to be ratified, and the dispensations from Rome, and the necessary powers from the Prince of Spain, were alone waited for that the marriage might be concluded in public or in private, whichever way would be most expeditious. The queen cared only for the completion of the irrevocable ceremony, which would bring her husband to her side before Lent.[195]

The interval of delay was consumed in hunting-parties[196] and dinners at the palace, where the courtiers played off before the guests the passions of their eager mistress.[197] The enemies of the marriage, French and English, had no time to lose, if they intended to prevent the completion of it.

When the queen's design was first publicly announced, the King of France directed Noailles to tell her frankly the alarm with which it was regarded at Paris. Henry and Montmorency said the same repeatedly, and at great length, to Dr. Wotton. The queen might have the best intentions of remaining at peace, but events might be too strong for her; and they suggested, at last, that she might give a proof of the good-will which she professed by making a fresh treaty with them.[198] That a country should be at peace while its titular king was at war, was a situation without a precedent. Intricate questions were certain to arise; for instance, if a mixed fleet of English and Spanish ships should escort the prince, or convoy his transports or treasure, or if the English ships having Spaniards on board, should enter French harbours. A thousand difficulties such as these might occur, and it would be wise to provide for them beforehand.

The uneasiness of the court of Paris was not allayed when the queen met this most reasonable proposal with a refusal.[199] A clause, she replied, was added to the marriage articles for the maintenance of the existing treaties with France, and with that and with her own promises the French government ought to be content. In vain Noailles pointed out that the existing treaties would not meet the new conditions; she was obstinate, and both Noailles and the King of France placed the worst interpretation upon her attitude. Philip, after his arrival, would unquestionably drag or lead her into his quarrels; and they determined, therefore, to employ all means, secret and open, to prevent his coming, and to co-operate with the English opposition.

The time to act had arrived. Rumours were industriously circulated that the Prince of Spain was already on the seas, bringing with him ten thousand Spaniards, who were to be landed at the Tower, and that eight thousand Germans were to follow from the Low Countries. Noailles and M. d'Oysel, then on his way through London to Scotland, had an interview with a number of lords and gentlemen, who undertook to place themselves at the head of an insurrection, and to depose the queen. The whole country was crying out against her, and the French ministers believed that the opposition had but to declare itself in arms to meet with universal sympathy. They regarded the persons with whom they were dealing as the representatives of the national discontent; but on this last point they were fatally mistaken.

Noailles spoke generally of lords and gentlemen; but those with whom d'Oysel and himself had communicated were a party of ten or twelve of the pardoned friends of the Duke of Northumberland, or of men otherwise notorious among the ultra-Protestants; the Duke of Suffolk and his three brothers, Lord Thomas, Lord John, and Lord Leonard Grey; the Marquis of Northampton; Sir Thomas Wyatt, son of the poet; Sir Nicholas Throgmorton; Sir Peter Carew; Sir Edmund Warner; Lord Cobham's brother-in-law; and Sir James Crofts, the late deputy of Ireland.[200] Courtenay, who had affected orthodoxy as long as he had hopes of the queen, was admitted into the confederacy. Cornwall and Devonshire were to be the first counties to rise, where Courtenay would be all-powerful by his name. Wyatt undertook to raise Kent, Sir James Crofts the Severn border, Suffolk and his brothers the midland counties. Forces from these four points were to converge on London, which would then stir for itself. The French Admiral Villegaignon promised to keep a fleet on the seas, and to move from place to place among the western English harbours, wherever his presence would be most useful. Plymouth had been tampered with, and the mayor and aldermen, either really, or as a ruse to gain information, affected a desire to receive a French garrison.[201] For the sake of their cause the Protestant party were prepared to give to France an influence in England as objectionable in itself, and as offensive to the majority of the people, as the influence of Spain; and the management of the opposition to the queen was snatched from the hands of those who might have brought it to some tolerable issue, by a set of men to whom the Spanish marriage was but the stalking-horse for the reimposition of their late tyranny. If the Duke of Northumberland, instead of setting up a rival to Mary, had loyally admitted her to the throne which was her right, he might have tied her hands, and secured the progress of moderate reform. Had the great patriotic anti-papal party been now able to combine, with no disintegrating element, they could have prevented the marriage or made it harmless. But the ultra-party plunged again into treason, in which they would succeed only to restore the dominion of a narrow and blighting sectarianism.[202]

The conspirators remained in London till the second week in January. Wyatt went into Kent, Peter Carew ran down the Channel to Exmouth in a vessel of his own, and sent relays of horses as far as Andover for Courtenay, Sir Nicholas Throgmorton undertaking to see the latter thus far upon his way. The disaffection was already simmering in Devonshire. There was a violent scene among the magistrates at the Christmas quarter-sessions at Exeter. A countryman came in and reported that he had been waylaid and searched by a party of strange horsemen in steel saddles, "under the gallows at the hill top," at Fair-mile, near Sir Peter Carew's house. His person had been mistaken, it seemed, but questions were asked, inquiries made, and ugly language had been used about the queen. On Carew's arrival the ferment increased. One of his lacqueys, mistaking intention for fact, whispered in Exeter that "my Lord of Devonshire was at Mohun's Ottery."[203] Six horses heavily loaded passed in, at midnight, through the city gates. The panniers were filled with harness and hand-guns from Sir Peter's castle at Dartmouth.[204] Sir John Chichester, Sir Arthur Champernowne, Peter and Gawen Carew, and Gybbes of Silverton, had met in private, rumour said for no good purpose; and the Exeter Catholics were anxious and agitated. They had been all disarmed after the insurrection of 1549, the castle was in ruins, the city walls were falling down. Should Courtenay come, the worst consequences were anticipated.