The new Queen naturally turned to her cousin Charles V. for guidance. He had upheld her mother’s cause and her own; and in the dark days which were past, his Ambassador Chapuys had been her indefatigable friend.
It was Mary’s consuming desire to bring back the English Church and nation to obedience to Rome—to undo the work of her father, and especially of her brother. The Emperor recommended caution; he advised the Queen to be patient; to watch and accommodate her policy to the manifestations of the feelings of her people; to punish the leaders who had striven to keep her from the throne, but to treat all their followers with clemency. Above all, she was to mark carefully the attitude of her sister Elizabeth, and to reorganise the finances of the country.
Mary had released Gardiner from the Tower, and made him her trusted Minister. His advice in all matters, save that of her marriage, coincided with the Emperor’s. It was thought that small difficulty would be found in restoring the Roman Catholic religion, but that difficulties might arise about the papal supremacy, and especially about the reception of a papal Legate. Much depended on the Pope. If His Holiness did not demand the restoration of the ecclesiastical property alienated during the last two reigns, and now distributed among over forty thousand proprietors, all might go well.
Signs were not wanting, however, that if the people were almost unanimous in accepting Mary as their Queen, they were not united upon religion. When Dr. Gilbert Bourne, preaching at St. Paul’s Cross (Aug. 13th, 1553) praised Bishop Bonner, he was interrupted by shouts; a dagger was thrown at him; he was hustled out of the pulpit, and his life was threatened. The tumult was only appeased when Bradford, a known Protestant, appealed to the crowd. The Lord Mayor of London was authorised to declare to the people that it was not the Queen’s intention to constrain men’s consciences, and that she meant to trust solely to persuasion to bring them to the true faith.
Five days later (August 18th), Mary issued her first Proclamation about Religion, in which she advised her subjects “to live together in quiet sort and Christian charity, leaving those new-found devilish terms of papist or heretic and such like.” She declared that she meant to support that religion which she had always professed; but she promised “that she would not compel any of her subjects thereunto, unto such time as further order, by common assent, may be taken therein”—a somewhat significant threat. The proclamation prohibited unlicensed preaching and printing “any book, matter, ballad, rhyme, interlude, process, or treatise, or to play any interlude, except they have Her Grace’s special licence in writing for the same,” which makes it plain that from the outset Mary did not intend that any Protestant literature should be read by her subjects if she could help it.[496]
Mary was crowned with great ceremony on October 1st, and her first Parliament met four days later (Oct. 5th to Dec. 6th, 1553). It reversed a decision of a former Parliament, and declared that Henry VIII.’s marriage with Catharine of Aragon had been valid, and that Mary was the legitimate heir to the throne; and it wiped out all the religious legislation under Edward VI. The Council had wished the anti-papal laws of Henry VIII. to be rescinded; but Parliament, especially the House of Commons, was not prepared for anything so sweeping. The Church of England was legally restored to what it had been at the death of Henry, and Mary was left in the anomalous position of being the supreme head of the Church in England while she herself devoutly believed in the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome. The title and the powers it gave were useful to restore by royal proclamation the mediæval ritual and worship, and Mass was reintroduced in this way in December.[497]
Meanwhile the marriage of the Queen was being discussed. Mary herself decided the matter by solemnly promising the Spanish Ambassador (Oct. 19th) that she would wed Philip of Spain; the marriage treaty was signed on January 12th, 1554; the formal betrothal took place in March, and the wedding was celebrated on July 25th.[498] It was very unpopular from the first. The boys of London pelted with snowballs the servants of the Spanish embassy sent to ratify the wedding treaty (Jan. 1st, 1554); the envoys themselves were very coldly received by the populace; and Mary had to issue a proclamation commanding that all courtesy should be used to the Prince of Spain and his train coming to England to marry the Queen.[499]
In September (1553) the pronouncedly Protestant Bishops who had remained in England to face the storm, Cranmer, Ridley, Coverdale, Latimer, were ejected and imprisoned; the Protestant refugees from France and Germany and many of the eminent Protestant leaders had sought safety on the Continent; the deprived Romanist Bishops, Gardiner, Heath, Bonner, Day, had been reinstated; and the venerable Bishop Tunstall, who had acted as Wolsey’s agent at the famous Diet of Worms, had been placed in the See of Durham.
Various risings, one or two of minor importance and a more formidable one under Sir Thomas Wyatt, had been crushed. Lady Jane Grey, Lord Guilford Dudley (February 12th, 1554), Sir Thomas Wyatt, Lord Suffolk, and others were executed. Charles V. strongly recommended the execution of the Princess Elizabeth, but his advice was not followed.