Mary Tudor (35 page)

Her victory was widely celebrated. She was as popular as any English sovereign who had ascended the throne before her, and her triumph was one of the most surprising events of the sixteenth century.
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She had preserved the Tudor dynasty, and now both the French king and the emperor sought to ingratiate themselves with her.

“This news,” wrote Charles V to his ambassadors, “is the best we could have had from England and we render thanks to God for having guided all things so well … [you will] offer our congratulations on her happy accession to the throne, telling her how great was our joy on hearing it.” The emperor now sought to justify his lack of intervention: “You may explain to her that you were instructed to proceed very gradually in your negotiation, with the object of rendering her some assistance, and that we were hastily making preparations, under cover of protection of the fisheries, to come to her relief.”
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Meanwhile the French, who had conspired with Northumberland,
were now forced to declare their belief in Mary’s legitimacy and deny their part in the coup.
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Many Englishmen believed that France had been set to invade in support of Northumberland. As Noailles reported, “You could not believe the foul and filthy words which this nation cries out every day against our own.”
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Henry II now feared that England might join the war on the emperor’s side and sought to emphasize Charles’s lack of support for Mary in the July crisis. “In all her own miseries, troubles and afflictions,” wrote the French ambassador, “as well as in those of the Queen her mother, the Emperor never came to their assistance, nor has he helped her now in her great need with a single man, ship or penny.”
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AS BELLS ACROSS
the country rang out the news of her victory, Mary left Framlingham to begin her slow and triumphant progress toward London.
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Along the route and at her various stopping places, she received the homage of her subjects. At Ipswich she was met by the bailiffs of the town, who presented her with “eleven pounds sterling in gold,” and by some young boys, who gave her a golden heart inscribed with the words “The Heart of the People.”
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Having spent two days in Ipswich, Mary moved to Colchester, where she stayed at the home of Muriel Christmas, a former servant of her mother, Katherine, and then journeyed to her residence Beaulieu in Essex. There she was presented with a purse of crimson velvet from the City of London, filled with half sovereigns of gold, “which gift she highly and thankfully accepted, and caused the presenters to have great cheer in her house.”
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From Beaulieu she rode on to Wanstead, east of London, where she was joined by her sister, Elizabeth, who had ridden from the Strand to meet her, accompanied by countless gentlemen, knights, and ladies.
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Leaving Wanstead on the third, Mary began her journey into the city, stopping en route at Whitechapel at the house of one “Mr Bramston,” where she “changed her apparel.”
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As Wingfield described the occasion:

A
T SEVEN IN THE EVENING OF AUGUST 3, 1553, MARY ENTERED
the City of London, accompanied by gentlemen, squires, knights, and lords, the king’s trumpeters, heralds, and sergeants at arms with bows and javelins.

She was dressed in a gown of purple velvet, its sleeves embroidered in gold; beneath it she wore a kirtle of purple satin thickly set with large pearls, with a gold and jeweled chain around her neck and a dazzling headdress on her head. Her mount, a palfrey, was richly trapped with cloth of gold.
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As the imperial ambassadors reported, “her look, her manner, her gestures, her countenance were such that in no event could they be improved.”
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Behind her rode Sir Anthony Browne, “leaning on her horse, having the train of her highness’ gown hanging over his shoulder,” followed by her sister, Elizabeth, the Duchess of Norfolk, the Marchioness of Exeter, and a “flock of peeresses, gentlewomen and ladies-in-waiting, never before seen in such numbers.”
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It was a spectacular display of dynastic unity, of power and authority: the first formal appearance of England’s queen regnant. According to one estimate, some ten thousand people accompanied the new queen into the capital.

Mary was met at Aldgate by the lord mayor and aldermen of London. Kneeling before her, the lord mayor presented the scepter of her office as a “token of loyalty and homage” and welcomed her into the city. She returned the scepter to the lord mayor with words “so gently spoken and with so smiling a countenance that the hearers wept for joy.”
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Mace in hand, the lord mayor joined the cavalcade next to the earl of Arundel, who bore the sword of state. At St. Botolph’s Church,
a choir of a hundred children from Christ’s Hospital, all dressed in blue with red caps on their heads and sitting on a great stage covered with canvas, sang choruses of welcome.
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All along the procession route the streets had been swept clean and spread with gravel so that the horses would not slip; the buildings had been decorated with rich tapestries, and spectators crowded onto roofs, walls, and steeples. As the procession moved through Aldgate, trumpets sounded from the gate’s battlements. Lining the streets through Leadenhall to the Tower were the guilds of London, all wearing their livery hoods and furs, all paying homage to their new queen. Wherever the queen passed, placards declared,
“Vox populi, vox Dei”
—“The voice of the people is the voice of God.”
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The streets thronged “so full of people shouting and crying ‘Jesus save her grace,’ with weeping tears for joy, that the like was never seen before,” reported the chronicler Charles Wriothesley.
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The imperial ambassadors agreed: The “joy of the people” was “hardly credible,” “the public demonstrations” having “never had their equal in the kingdom.”
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With cannons sounding from every battlement “like great thunder, so that it had been like to an earthquake,” Mary arrived at the Tower. There the lord mayor took his leave and Mary was met by Sir John Gage and Sir John Brydges, constable and lieutenant of the Tower, respectively, standing in front of rows of archers and arquebusiers. Kneeling on the green before the Chapel Royal of St. Peter ad Vincula within the Tower precinct were Edward Courtenay, who had been prisoner since the age of nine and whose father, the marquess of Exeter, had been beheaded in 1538; the aged Thomas Howard, duke of Norfolk, still under sentence of death since the last months of Henry VIII’s reign; and the deprived bishops of Winchester and Durham, Stephen Gardiner and Cuthbert Tunstall. In the name of all the prisoners, Bishop Gardiner congratulated Mary on her accession. “Ye are my prisoners!” exclaimed the queen. Raising them up one by one, she kissed them and granted them their liberty. Courtenay and Norfolk were restored to their rank and estates, the deprived bishops to their sees. Then, as her standard was raised above the keep, Mary entered the Tower.
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“The people … are full of hope,” wrote the imperial ambassadors, “that her reign will be a godly, righteous and just one, and help to establish her firmly on the throne.”
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NOW IN POSSESSION
of her kingdom, Mary could begin the task of governing. She had won the throne at Framlingham with a small council of her household officers, including Robert Rochester, Edward Waldegrave, and Henry Jerningham, together with figures such as the earls of Sussex and Bath, who had arrived in the early days of the coup. All were of proven loyalty, but few had political experience. Then, as Mary journeyed to London, she had been besieged with apologies and pledges of fidelity from the Edwardian councillors who had been so closely involved with Edward’s Protestant reforms and who had, just days before, conferred the crown on Lady Jane Grey. Some had displayed reluctance in agreeing to Northumberland’s plan, but all had eventually signed Edward’s “Device for the Succession.” Though Mary doubted their loyalty and their motives, most upon their submission were restored to royal favor.

To her existing council of household servants, Mary appointed experienced men such as Sir William Petre, Lord William Paget, the earls of Arundel and Pembroke, Sir John Mason, and Sir Richard Southwell. The earl of Arundel became lord steward; William Paulet, the marquess of Winchester, retained his office of high treasurer. By the time Mary reached the Tower, she had a Privy Council, a hybrid of trust and experience, of some twenty-five members.

Mary also appointed to her Privy Council men who had suffered for their views and faith under the previous regime, including those she had freed from the Tower. Stephen Gardiner was appointed to the Privy Council the day after his release and three weeks later became lord chancellor. Though he had been principal adviser to Henry VIII in the king’s divorce from Katherine of Aragon, he had become increasingly conservative in his religious views during Edward’s reign and had developed a hatred for Northumberland after being imprisoned in 1551. As far as Mary was concerned this sufficiently redeemed him, though he would never come to enjoy the queen’s full confidence. Yet Mary’s political pragmatism was resented by many of the councillors. “Discontent is rife,” the imperial ambassadors reported on August 16, “especially among those who stood by the queen in the days of her adversity and trouble, who feel they have not been rewarded as
they deserve, for the conspirators have been raised in authority.”
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Although their commitment to Mary varied, they all shared a fundamental loyalty to the Tudor regime.

In all, Mary’s Privy Council numbered some forty councillors. While it was among these men that a core group formed to govern and administer the realm, it was as much in the halls and corridors of the royal household, in whispered conversations and secret meetings with the queen, that decisions were made and policies formed. Unlike the Privy Council, the upper echelons of the royal household were an exclusive preserve of trusted Catholic loyalists whom Mary relied upon. Members of Mary’s “princely affinity of proven loyalty” replaced all those who had acted against her in the succession crisis. Sir Henry Jerningham, who had been in Mary’s service since 1533, became vice chamberlain and captain of the Guard; the long-serving Robert Rochester became comptroller of the household; Edward Waldegrave, master of the great wardrobe; and Sir Edward Hastings, master of the horse. John de Vere, the earl of Oxford, whose defection to Mary in the succession crisis had proved decisive, recovered the “hereditary” position of lord great chamberlain from the marquess of Northampton.