Mary Tudor (33 page)

AS EDWARD LAY
on his deathbed, struggling to breathe, Northumberland took the first steps to execute the plan. He needed to ensure that Mary did not become suspicious of his intentions for the succession and sought to lull her into a false state of security, regularly sending her news of the king’s health and promising that if he should die she would be queen with his assistance. At first Mary believed him, but then she learned the truth. On or about July 1, her closest advisers told her of Northumberland’s deceit.

Mary acted swiftly. She feigned ignorance and tricked the duke into thinking he could get possession of her whenever he pleased. She was then staying at Hunsdon in Hertfordshire, no more than twenty miles from his grasp. Yet her household servants had already formulated a plan for her escape. She had been summoned to Edward’s bedside, but on July 3 she received a tip-off from a spy at court that the king’s end was near. On the night of the fourth, she fled with six attendants, four men and two women. The pretext was the illness of her physician, Rowland Scurloch, which forced her to move household for risk of infection. Through the night Mary and her party traveled, riding north through Hertfordshire to Sawston Hall in Cambridgeshire, the home of Sir John Huddleston, a local Catholic gentleman. At first light, Mary rose, heard Mass, and then set out once again. There would be perilous consequences for Huddleston’s loyalty to the princess: when Northumberland’s men arrived the following day and realized that Mary had fled, they burned his house to the ground.

Instructions were hurriedly dispatched to lieutenants and justices across the country, notifying them of Mary’s escape and ordering them to prepare to muster troops at an hour’s notice and to maintain continual watch:

From Sawston, Mary rode the next twenty-eight miles virtually nonstop. Finally she reached Hengrave Hall, the seat of the earl of Bath, just outside Bury St. Edmunds. There she rested briefly before continuing on to Euston Hall, where she was met by the dowager Lady Burgh. When she had been informed of the king’s death on the previous day, the sixth, she had reacted with cautious suspicion: the messenger, Robert Reyns, had been sent by Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, a gentleman of Edward’s Privy Chamber who was known for his Protestant sympathies. Whatever the truth, the message had made flight more urgent. Mary hurried on to her seat at Kenninghall, Norfolk, where the news of the king’s death was confirmed.

A
S LADY JANE GREY WAS PROCLAIMED QUEEN, “NO ONE SHOWED
any sign of rejoicing, and no one cried ‘Long live the Queen’ except the herald who made the proclamation and a few archers who followed him.”
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As the Genoese merchant Baptista Spinola continued, “for the hearts of the people are with Mary, the Spanish Queen’s daughter.”
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One young man, Gilbert Potter, who had shouted out that Lady Mary was the rightful queen, was arrested and sent to Cheapside, where his ears were nailed to the pillory and then cut off.
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All hope of Mary’s accession looked to have been lost. The Armory, Treasury, and Great Seal were all under the control of the duke of Northumberland, and with Lady Jane in possession of the Tower, the capital seemed to be secure. Warships had been dispatched to the Thames, and “troops were stationed everywhere to prevent the people from rising in arms or causing any disorder.”
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Mary had neither soldiers nor sufficient funds; she was an isolated figure in East Anglia, surrounded only by her household servants. The ambassadors sent by the emperor were pessimistic about her safety. Believing Northumberland
had secured French support, they feared nothing could be done to prevent Jane’s accession and considered Mary’s chances “well-nigh impossible.”
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But Mary was determined to proclaim herself queen, a resolution the ambassadors believed was fraught with danger. “All the forces of the country are in the Duke’s hands, and my Lady has no hope of raising enough men to face him, nor means of assisting those who may espouse her cause.”
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They sent agents to advise her not to issue a proclamation but to wait to see if any support was forthcoming.
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Now only the English people could put Mary on the throne.

ON JULY 9, MARY
wrote to Jane’s Council from Kenninghall, demanding that it renounce Jane and recognize her as queen, as her father’s will had decreed:

Mary made it clear that she knew of the plot against her:

She called upon them to display their loyalty to her “just and right cause” and declared that she was ready to pardon them in the hope of avoiding bloodshed and civil war.
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After presenting the dispatch to the Privy Council, Mary’s messenger, Thomas Hungate, was sent to the Tower. The Council replied in a letter of the same day, addressed to “my Lady Mary” and criticizing “your supposed title which you judge yourself to have.” They asserted
that Jane was queen of England by the authority of letters patent executed by the late king and endorsed by the nobility of the realm. They reminded her that by an act of Parliament she was illegitimate and unable to inherit and urged her to submit with assurances that “if you will for respect be quiet and obedient as you ought, you shall find us all and several [ready] to do any service that we, with duty, may be glad with you to preserve the common state of this Realm.”
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Meanwhile, circulars hurriedly drafted by Northumberland were sent to justices of the peace, ordering them to “assist us in our rightful possession of this kingdom and to extirp, to disturb, repel and resist the fained and untrue claim of the Lady Mary bastard.”
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The duke of Suffolk, Jane’s father, was nominated to lead an army of reinforcements to East Anglia to capture Mary, though Jane “with weeping tears made request to the whole Council that her father might tarry at home in her company,” and Northumberland declared that he would lead the charge himself.
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On the evening of July 13, three carts rumbled out of the Tower, laden with “great guns and small; bows, bills and spears.” Before he left, Northumberland bade the Council farewell: “Well, since ye think it good, I and mine will go, not doubting of your fidelity to the Queen’s Majesty, which I leave in your custody,” not to leave them your “friends in the briars, and betray us.” They were fighting for “God’s cause” and for “fear of papistry’s re-entrance” into the realm.
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The following morning, Northumberland set out from Durham Palace with munitions, artillery, field guns, and more than 6,000 men. The imperial ambassadors wrote to Charles V, “We believe that my Lady will be in his hands in four days’ time unless she has sufficient force to resist.”
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Yet as he rode eastward Northumberland noted, “The people press to see us, but not one sayeth God speed us.”
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Within days Richard Troughton, bailiff of South Witham, Lincolnshire, who was attempting to win support for Mary in Lincolnshire, had submitted a petition to the Privy Council stating that Northumberland had poisoned King Edward and would now “go about to destroy the noble blood of England.” He was confident that “over a hundred thousand men would rise” in support of Mary, believing “her grace should have her right, or else there would be the bloodiest day … that ever was in England.”
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F
OR FIVE DAYS MARY STAYED AT KENNINGHALL, RALLYING FRIENDS
and supporters among the East Anglian gentry and commons. The core of her support was her household. Many, like Robert Rochester and Edward Waldegrave, had served her throughout Edward’s reign and had consistently defended her and her right to hear the Catholic Mass. Now they moved to defend her right to the throne. As Robert Wingfield, an East Anglian gentleman, wrote, they “did not hesitate to face an untimely death for their Queen.” Each played an important role in mobilizing members of the local gentry and their tenants. The first gentlemen to arrive at Kenninghall, Sir Henry Bedingfield, Sir John Shelton, and Sir Richard Southwell, were from the same group of conservative East Anglian magnates as the men in Mary’s household. The arrival of Southwell and Henry Radcliffe, earl of Sussex, with money, provisions, and armed men would greatly expand Mary’s meager forces. Southwell was a knight, the wealthiest of his rank in Norfolk, and his commitment did much to raise the morale of Mary and her supporters.

On July 12, with her forces growing, Mary moved southeast to another of her principal houses, Framlingham Castle in Suffolk, the ancient seat of the Howard family. It was far larger than Kenninghall and, as the strongest castle in the area, an ideal place from which to defend against, or indeed engage, a determined enemy. Built by the old duke of Norfolk, it had come into her possession only a few months before. Now it would witness Mary’s stand against the might of central government. As she journeyed to Framlingham, many of the local gentry and justices, together with a crowd of country folk, gathered in the deer park adjacent to the castle to await her arrival. “A great concourse of people were moved by their love for her to come and promise to support her to the end and maintain her right to the Crown, bringing money and cattle as their means enabled them.”
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