Mary Tudor (44 page)

The day after his execution, a group of councillors visited Elizabeth in the Tower.
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Despite Wyatt’s exoneration of her, pressure remained on the princess to admit her guilt. Mary still refused to proceed against her sister with insufficient evidence. Finally with Elizabeth maintaining her innocence, the decision was made to move her to Woodstock, a remote country house in Oxfordshire, “until such time as certain matters touching her case which be not yet cleared may be thoroughly tried and examined.” Here she would be placed in the custody of Sir Henry Bedingfield, a Catholic gentleman of proven loyalty whose father had been steward to Katherine of Aragon during her last days at Kimbolton.
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On May 19, Elizabeth left the Tower for Woodstock. As Mary stated in her instructions to Bedingfield, she was to be “safely looked unto for the safeguard of her person, having nevertheless regard to her. In such good and honourable sort as may be agreeable to our honour and her estate and degree.”
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It was an important caveat, one that Mary had not been afforded during her confinement in the infant Elizabeth’s household at Hatfield.

Elizabeth would spend the next eleven months under house arrest. As Don Juan Hurtado de Mendoza, a Spanish noble, surmised to the bishop of Arras, “It was indispensable to throw the Lady Elizabeth into prison, and it is considered that she will have to be executed, as while she lives it will be very difficult to make the Prince’s entry here safe, or accomplish anything of promise.”
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T
HIS WAS MARY’S PROMISE, MADE AT THE GUILDHALL AS WYATT
threatened London. She would submit treaty to “the people” for ratification—a step her male predecessors had never taken. As Parliament prepared to meet in the days after the rebellion, such was the climate of fear and uncertainty that it was initially proposed that Parliament meet in Oxford. When it did meet, in London, Mary was not present.
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In his opening address on April 5, Gardiner proceeded to make the case for the marriage treaty:

In spite of their fears, both houses ratified the marriage treaty within ten days of Parliament’s opening. Renard wrote a triumphant letter, mocking “the heretics and French who hoped there would be violent dissent.”
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To secure English acceptance of the alliance, the emperor had conceded highly favorable terms. Although Philip was granted the right to enjoy the style and name of king of England, the treaty denied him regal power and limited his involvement to assisting the queen in the administration of her realm insofar as the “rights, laws, privileges and customs” of both kingdoms permitted.

Should Mary die before Philip, he would have no further claim to authority in England. The succession to the English crown was limited to Mary’s right of inheritance, and only the children from their marriage might succeed them. Don Carlos, Philip’s existing heir, did not have a claim. No foreign office holders could be introduced into English government, and England would not be involved in Habsburg wars, it being stated explicitly that England was not to be drawn into the wars between Emperor Charles V and Henry II, the king of France.

In the first draft of the marriage settlement, Philip had only to acknowledge that Mary was not bound to offer any more assistance in the Habsburg-Valois struggle than promised in two treaties signed by Henry VIII some ten years earlier. But at the last moment Gardiner inserted an additional clause stating that England “by occasion of this matrimony, shall not directly or indirectly be entangled with the war that now is betwixt Charles and the French King.” Moreover, Philip shall “see the peace between the said realms of France and England observed, and shall give no cause of any breach.”
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The treaty specifically sought to separate Mary as queen of England from Mary, Philip’s spouse, so as to underline that her power and status would not be diminished by the marriage. Mary was to be “sole Queen.” The act ratifying the treaty stipulated,

It was an attempt to address concerns about the status of a married queen regnant, given the traditional subjugation of women. As Renard reported on January 7, the pretext for summoning Parliament had been “furnished by two English lawyers who have been prompted to say that by English law, if his Highness marries the Queen, she loses her title to the crown and his Highness becomes King.”
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There were no precedents, and Wyatt’s rebellion had been inspired by fears that Mary’s marriage would lead to enslavement by the Spanish. But at the formal betrothal in March, Mary had once more pledged her commitment to the national interest:

While the marriage treaty prescribed Mary’s independent sovereignty, another act passed in the same Parliament, the Act Concerning Regal Power, stated that Mary held her regal power as fully and absolutely as her male predecessors had. According to an account written twenty-five years later by Sir William Fleetwood, recorder of London, this additional act was passed after a conspiracy that proposed that Mary “take upon the title of Conqueror” so that she might “at her pleasure reform the monasteries, advance her friends, suppress her enemies, establish religion, and do what she like.”
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Given the unprecedented nature of female rule, there was no existing statute, including Magna Carta, that limited the authority of a queen.

Fleetwood described how, having been presented with the proposal, Mary read it “over and over again, and the more she read and thought of it, the more she misliked it,” believing it a breach of her coronation oath, by which she had promised “to keep to the people of England and others your realms and dominions the laws and liberties of this realm.” She then “cast it into the fire,” after which the chancellor “devised the said Act of Parliament.”
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To prevent confusion among “malicious and ignorant persons,” the bill for the act, drafted by Gardiner, declared that “the regal power of this realm is in the Queen’s Majesty as fully and absolutely as ever it was in any of her most noble progenitors Kings of this realm.” It was passed in the Commons and two days later in the Lords.

The act clarified the ambiguity of Mary’s status as queen regnant. By throwing the proposal into the fire, Mary had declared her intent to be a parliamentary queen. Her sovereignty would be dependent on and prescribed by statute law. Thus Mary had chosen to follow the precedents of her male progenitors. The inauguration of female sovereignty could not have been placed in safer hands.

As Mary made her speech at Parliament’s dissolution in May, she was interrupted five or six times by shouts of “God save the Queen!” as most of those present were “moved to tears by her eloquence and virtue.”
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MARY NOW WROTE
to Philip, informing him that Parliament had ratified the marriage articles and expressing her “entire confidence that his coming to England should be safe and agreeable” to him.
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Though Philip had pledged to be an obedient son and follow his father’s will, the marriage held few personal attractions for him. Mary was eleven years his senior, and he referred to her as his
cara y muy amada tía
(dear and beloved aunt). Further, he disavowed the treaty, declaring that he was not bound by an agreement that had been reached without his knowledge. He would sign it so that the marriage could take place, “but by no means in order to bind himself or his heirs to observe the articles, especially any that might burden his conscience.”
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As the prince prepared to leave La Coruña for England, Charles wrote to the duke of Alva, who was accompanying him, “For the love of God, see to it that my son behaves in the right manner; for otherwise I tell you I would rather never have taken the matter in hand at all.”
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W
ITH PARLIAMENT DISSOLVED AND THE MARRIAGE TREATY RATIFIED
, preparations began in earnest for Philip’s arrival and the royal wedding, which was to take place at Winchester Cathedral, the episcopal seat of Bishop Gardiner. The gallows scattered throughout the City of London, where the condemned rebels had hung, were taken down; the cross at Cheapside was repaired and a scaffold erected for the celebrations to welcome the prince.
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Mary had commissioned a suit to be made for Philip’s entry into Winchester and for the wedding itself, together with hangings for the royal bed embroidered with the arms and devices of Spain and England. Some 350 Englishmen had been selected as Philip’s household officers, among them individuals who had supported Mary in July 1553, such as John Huddleston. All had been assembled before the chamberlain of the royal household and asked to swear an oath of allegiance, and they, together with a hundred archers who were to join the guard Philip brought with him, now traveled to Southampton to await the prince’s long-anticipated arrival.
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Finally, on June 16, Mary and her entire court set out from Richmond for Winchester and there took up residence in the Episcopal Palace of Bishop’s Waltham, which had been specially prepared ahead of her arrival.

The decision to hold the wedding ceremony outside London had been driven by fears of disorder in the capital. Rumor and discontent were rife. Seditious prophecies were published in London to the effect that Philip’s delay in embarking for England was caused by his reluctance to marry Mary and that the Spaniards would not let him come.
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