A Sorrowful Youth
To know Mary we must go back to her youth, which was spent in pain and grief. She was not yet two (1518) when her father turned to other women and forgot her suffering mother; at eight her father pressed for the annulment of his marriage to her mother; and at fifteen he left her mother and sent mother and daughter far apart into exile. Even at her mother's death Mary was kept from seeing her. After Elizabeth's birth (1533) Mary was called a bastard and stripped of the title of princess. The emperor's ambassador feared that Anne Boleyn might destroy Mary, who might one day compete with Anne's daughter for the succession. After Elizabeth took up residence at Hatfield, Mary was made her attendant and lodged in the poorest room of Elizabeth's house. Her servants were taken from her and replaced with others subject to Lady Shelton of Hatfield. Lady Shelton called Mary a bastard and said, "If I were the king, I would kick you out of the house." She also threatened Mary that the king meant to have her beheaded. Mary spent her first winter at Hatfield (1534) in sickness and fear.
Some time later the king relented a little toward her, and until the end of his life she lived in relative comfort. But in return for his forbearance he forced her to sign a letter naming Henry head of the religion and Church of England, calling her mother's marriage to the king adultery, and acknowledging her own illegitimacy. These bitter events weakened Mary's nerves and "wounded her conscience," and she never knew good health again. In Somerset's regency, when Parliament recognized Mary as lawful heir to the English throne, she recovered the courage she had lost. After fortune turned to her, she held to her Catholic faith, inherited in childhood from her Spanish forebears, strengthened by her mother's life and painful death, and her best refuge in the days of misfortune and helplessness. She did not submit even to the royal council's order forbidding Mass in her residence (1549). Somerset overlooked her firm faith, but after his fall her half-brother the king insisted on carrying out the council's order, and three of her attendants were arrested for defying it (1551). The priest who held Mass in Mary's house was taken from her, and Mary had to give up her beloved rite. Her spirit broken, she asked the emperor's ambassador to arrange her flight to Europe. But the far-sighted emperor ignored the request, and Mary stayed in England.
Victory and Accession
Victory came at last, on the day the Duke of Northumberland's soldiers refused his orders. Those who rose in her support not only asked for no reward but gladly gave up their goods to secure her victory. On the day she reached London as Queen of England (3 August 1553), even the half-Protestant townspeople received her warmly. Elizabeth stood abashed beside the city gate waiting for her, not knowing how Mary, who for her sake had suffered years of humiliation, would treat her. But Mary embraced her warmly and showered her companions with kisses. The English were as beside themselves with joy as on the day when Henry VIII, a handsome youth, mounted the throne.
Mary's Character
Mary was only thirty-seven at her accession, but her painful, sorrowful story had withered her face. Since reaching maturity she had never had good health; for years she had suffered from dropsy, disorders of the digestive system and constant headaches. Many times she had been bled as treatment, which left her nervous and sallow. At times, from fear that she would bear no child, she fainted. Her body had grown thin and weak, her forehead was lined, her reddish hair was turning gray, and her eyes were so deep-set that to read a letter she had to hold it very close to her face. She had a plain, masculine face and a deep, harsh voice like a man's. Time, without granting her the delicacies of a woman, had given her all the weaknesses. Yet some womanly gifts remained: she wove and embroidered with care, patience and skill, and played the lute. She also knew Spanish, Latin, Italian and French. Had she been free of bigotry and rigidity in religion, and had the burden of government not fallen on her, she might have become an outstanding woman. Mary was simple and honest to excess, ignorant of political wiles, and suffered from longing to give her heart to someone and win a heart in return. At times she was short-tempered and spoke harshly. Aware of the limits of her mind, she listened to the advice of those around her. Setting aside her stiffness and inflexibility in her religious beliefs, she was a kind, gentle, large-minded woman. She spared no effort to free those who were wrongly the victims of the law. Often, unrecognized, she visited people's homes, sat and talked with housewives, noted their pains and needs, and helped them as far as she could. She returned to the universities the estates and endowments her predecessors had taken from them.
Early Tolerance
The best side of Mary's character showed in the relative religious tolerance of the early days of her rule. She not only freed Gardiner, Bonner and others imprisoned for opposing Protestantism, but pardoned those who had tried to keep her from the throne. Even so, she made some of them, including the Duke of Suffolk, pay a heavy fine into the treasury, and with the money so raised she reduced taxes. Peter Martyr and other foreign Protestants were given safe conduct to leave England.
The privy council tried in haste the Duke of Northumberland and six of his allies, who had plotted to strip Mary of the succession and set the crown on Jane Grey, and condemned them to death. Mary meant to spare even the Duke of Northumberland, but Simon Renard, now the emperor's ambassador in England, prevented it. Three of the condemned in their last moments declared their loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church, but Jane Grey called the privy council's sentence just and put the others' confessions down to cowardice. Mary meant to free Jane too, but at the insistence of her advisers Jane was kept in the Tower, with more room given her.
On 13 August Mary announced that she would not interfere with the beliefs of any religious group; this was one of the first declarations of religious liberty issued by governments in recent centuries. Hoping to bring Protestants back to Catholicism by argument, she had Protestant and Catholic theologians debate in public. But their sharp, fruitless disputes destroyed her hope. Soon after, one of Bishop Edmund Bonner's assistants, who in his sermons spread Catholic views, was attacked by opponents and a dagger was thrown at him. Two Protestant theologians saved him from death. Mary, alarmed by the disorder that toleration produced, ordered by decree (18 August 1553) that all discussion of religious beliefs and teaching be forbidden, except in the universities, until Parliament met and dealt with religious disputes. Cranmer, who was still archbishop, was ordered not to leave his palace at Lambeth. Cranmer sharply attacked the Mass as the Catholics practiced it, calling it "the most abominable form of idolatry." In September 1553 he was put in the Tower with Latimer. Ridley, Bishop of London, who had called both Mary and Elizabeth bastards, had been put in the Tower two months earlier. All in all, in the first months of her reign Mary was more tolerant, gentler and more liberal than the rulers of her day.
Economic Troubles
Mary faced problems more tangled and difficult than her ability, intelligence and judgment could meet. To end the country's disorder and administrative corruption she set to work, cut the cost of the court, stabilized the currency, and kept courtiers from influencing parliamentary elections. England had not seen elections as good as those held in Mary's time for centuries. But lowering taxes squeezed the treasury. To balance the budget Mary laid duties on the export of cloth and the import of French wine. These measures, instead of lightening the people's load, stagnated trade. To check the growth of capitalism Mary limited looms to one or two per person. She called to account the "wealthy weavers" who paid workers small wages and forbade paying workers in goods instead of wages. But the lack of able and honest men to carry out her intentions, together with the country's economic laws, defeated her aims.
Restoring Catholic Worship
Even in religion she wrestled with tangled economic problems. Hardly an influential family in England had not profited from the Church's plundered property, and this made it hard for such families to return to Catholicism. England's Protestants, a wealthy minority, might at any moment act to put the Protestant Elizabeth on the throne. Mary meant to leave Catholics free to practice their rites, but the emperor, who for thirty-two years had wrestled with Protestants, warned her to avoid extremes and to limit Mass to her household and those near her. But Mary's religious feeling was deeper and more rooted than prudence and policy would allow. The skeptical generation that had grown up in London viewed with surprise the intensity of her devotion to religious duty; and when Mary asked the Spanish ambassador to kneel beside her to ask God's blessing, he judged the queen's act probably unwise and lacking in tact. Mary saw spreading the faith for which she had borne so much suffering, humiliation and hardship as her mission. So she sent an envoy to the pope asking him to lift the interdict on the English Church. But when Cardinal Pole asked to return to England as the pope's official legate, Mary accepted Charles's view that the time was not right for so bold a step.
The Parliament that opened on 5 October 1553 did nothing useful. It repealed all the religious laws made in Edward's reign; it eased the fines for breaches of religious rules, which under Edward VI and Henry VIII had carried heavy penalties; and it recognized Mary as Henry's lawful child and legal heir. But Parliament paid no attention to the return of Church property, refused to restore the pope's supremacy over the Church of England, and, against Mary's own wish, kept her as head of the Church of England. Mary, using her powers, removed the Protestant bishops and set the deposed Catholic bishops in their place. Bonner again became Bishop of London, and Gardiner Bishop of Winchester and one of the queen's close advisers. Bishops who had married were removed from their offices. Catholic rites were not only permitted but the people were called to take part, and, as a Protestant historian says, "the people's zeal to revive Catholicism, using the legal facilities, left no doubt that all the people of the country, except London and a few other great towns, shared the queen's belief." The decree of 4 March 1554 made Catholic worship lawful in England, declared Protestantism and all other heretical sects illegal, and forbade Protestant sermons and publications.
The Spanish Match
Mary's marriage plans angered the English nation even more than this religious swing. Mary naturally feared marriage, but in the hope of having an heir who would keep Elizabeth from the throne, she decided to look for a husband. By her own claim, and very probably, she was a maiden. Had she committed even the slightest sin, she would not have grown up so gloomy, stubborn and devout. Her advisers proposed Edward Courtenay, a great-grandson of Edward IV, but Mary did not like so dissolute a man. When Courtenay despaired of marrying Mary, ignoring his weakness before a strong and stubborn queen, he made a plan to marry Elizabeth and sought to overthrow Mary, set Elizabeth in her place and rule England himself in Elizabeth's name. Charles V proposed to Mary marriage with his son Philip and promised to give up for his son all his powers except the imperial title, and to give the Netherlands to their future son. Mary was beside herself with joy at becoming wife of the ruler of Spain, Flanders, the Netherlands, Naples and Spain's possessions in America, and the prospect of a political and religious union of England with Spain stirred her half-Spanish blood.
But being ten years older than Philip (so the book) and past the charm and freshness of youth, she feared she could not satisfy the young Philip's wishes, and even feared she could not show affection to her future husband. Philip too had no wish to marry her. Philip's English agents reported that Mary was "a perfect saint" and "wore unbecoming clothes," and asked whether it would not be better for him to seek a charming wife among Europe's princesses. At last Charles, to urge his son to marry Mary, pointed out that union with the Queen of England would give Spain a strong ally against France and strengthen Spanish rule over the Netherlands, which depended commercially on England. Charles had in mind forming from the Catholic countries of Spain, France and England a league to put down the Protestants of Germany, and by joining the houses of Habsburg and Tudor to give western Europe some years of enforced peace and quiet.
The queen's privy council and the English people were aware of the need and importance of this marriage, but feared that Mary's union with Philip would make England a province of Spain and entangle it in the war between Spain and France. To satisfy the English nation the emperor gave assurance that Philip would hold the title of King of England only as long as Mary lived, and that Mary would remain independent ruler of England. It was agreed that Mary share all of Philip's titles; and that if Don Carlos (Philip's son by his former wife) died childless, Mary or her child should inherit the Spanish empire. Moreover, the shrewd and cunning emperor promised Mary 60,000 pounds a year from the empire's revenues for as long as she lived. The royal council of England accepted this tempting offer with a few minor conditions and approved Mary's marriage to Philip. Mary herself, though a shy and reserved woman, was impatient for the marriage. Had she not spent long years longing to win a heart? But the English people were not pleased with her marriage to Philip. The Protestant minority, who had borne oppression and pressure in the hope that Elizabeth would one day unseat the weak and barren Mary and take her place, were now alarmed that Mary, with Spain's help, was bringing Catholicism back to England. The nobles of the country, who had grown rich by plundering Church property, trembled for fear that their property would be taken back.
Even the Catholics of the country hated and feared the rule of a foreign man who would sacrifice England's interests by force to the aims of another country. Protest grew across England. The frightened people of Plymouth asked the King of France to take them under his protection. Four gentlemen of the country planned a rising to begin on 18 March 1554. The Duke of Suffolk (Jane Grey's pardoned father) was to rouse the people of Warwickshire, Sir James Croft to lead a rising of his tenants in Wales, Sir Peter Carew to rouse the people of Devonshire, and Sir Thomas Wyatt the Younger to lead the rebels of Kent. Wyatt, a poet, had acquired some parcels of former Church lands which his son did not want to lose. By sharing their plan with Courtenay, whose task was to bring Elizabeth in with the rebels, the leaders betrayed themselves. Bishop Stephen Gardiner, who after Courtenay's failure to marry Mary had grown suspicious of him and had caught wind of his intent to take revenge on Mary, arrested him, and Courtenay, apparently under force and duress, revealed the conspirators' plan.
Wyatt's Rebellion
The conspirators, who thought death in battle more honorable than beheading at the queen's executioners' hands, hurried to arms, and the rising spread across four counties at once (February 1554). Wyatt led 7,000 fighting men toward London and called on the English people to stop England being annexed to Spain. The Protestants of London eagerly prepared to open the city's gates to Wyatt's soldiers. The queen's privy council, unable to make up its mind, did not gather even a single soldier to defend the city. Mary herself wondered how it was that the English who had set her on the throne with such zeal had now resolved to keep her from the happiness she had longed for through long years of suffering and misfortune. She understood that unless she took the reins in her own hands and found a way to put down the rebels, her life and rule would soon end.
So she went at once to the Guildhall of London, appearing among a stirred crowd who did not know whether to choose the queen or the rebels. She told the people that if the House of Commons so voted she was ready to give up marriage with Philip, son of the King of Spain, and live out her life alone; but she would never allow opponents to plunge the country into riot and political disorder "on the pretext of her marriage." Then she added: "It is hard for me to speak of a mother's love for her child, for I have never had a child. But if it is possible for a queen to love her subjects as her children, then I assure you I give you the purest feelings of my heart." Her words struck the people so deeply that all declared their support for the queen. In one day the government's agents gathered 25,000 fighting men to defend the city. The Duke of Suffolk was arrested, and Croft and Carew fled. Wyatt, left alone, fought the government's soldiers in the streets of the city with his weak force and drew near the queen's palace at Whitehall. Mary's guards begged her to flee the palace, but she stayed in it. Wyatt's soldiers were finally defeated, and he himself, with no strength left, surrendered and was sent to the Tower. Mary drew breath again, but she was no longer the kind and compassionate queen of before.