The Reign of Mary Tudor

Politics, Government and Religion in England 1553-58

D.M. Loades

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317899358
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Geschichte
• Categoría: Britische Geschichte

`...by far the best overall history of the reign to date.'American Historical ReviewWithin a chronological framework, David Loades adopts a thematic approach to the reign.

CHAPTER ONE

The structure of the regime: court, council and administration

The nature of Mary’s victory in July 1553 puzzled and somewhat alarmed foreign observers. They were accustomed to aristocratic faction and to peasant revolt, but this was neither. Robert Wingfield, who wrote his account within a few months of the events, emphasised the spontaneous and popular nature of her support, but his work also makes clear the crucial importance of the middling and upper gentry.¹ It was the ‘middling sort’ who first rallied to her at Kenninghall and Framlingham, her own affinity and their friends and neighbours, whose swift and resolute action convinced a wavering and uncertain aristocracy where the path of duty lay. This made English politics different and therefore unpredictable from a continental point of view. It also meant that Mary had no ‘shadow’ council waiting to take over the government (as Elizabeth was to have in 1558) and therefore had to assemble her administration from scratch. From the moment when she proclaimed herself queen she needed the appurtenances of royalty and had no option but to create a council from the material which was immediately to hand.² The uncertain nature of her prospects during the previous decade and the strict religious tests which she had herself imposed, had meant that her household as heir apparent had not attracted a very glittering array of talent. Her faithful servants, Robert Rochester, Edward Waldegrave and Sir Francis Englefield, did not make an impressive royal council, but fortunately they were not called upon to sustain that role unaided. By 12 July, when she moved her growing host to Framlingham, she had been joined by Sir John Shelton, Sir Henry Bedingfield and Sir Richard Southwell,³ and over the following week, as the tide turned decisively in her favour, there arrived the earl of Bath, the earl of Sussex, Lord Wentworth, Sir Thomas Cornwallis, Sir John Mordaunt, Richard Morgan, Thomas Wharton and several other men of substance and experience.⁴ By the time that Lord Paget and the earl of Arundel arrived on the 19th to offer the submission of the lords in London, the queen already had a working council of nearly twenty members. She also had a de facto secretary in the person of John Bourne, who kept such notes of the business of the Framlingham council as have survived.⁵ She did not, however, have the makings of a stable and successful government. Even if we include those who had clearly declared for Mary in other parts of the country, such as the earl of Oxford, Lord Rich, Lord Dacre, Sir Thomas Cheney and Sir John Gage, she could still deploy only a fragmentary assortment of political talent, with little recent experience of high office.

For their part, the London council had never been solidly behind Northumberland. Indeed Lord Paget had been disgraced in 1551 and had been recalled only after the king’s death.⁶ He had been closely associated with Somerset, but was innocent of any involvement in the plot to crown Jane Grey. The earl of Arundel had also been excluded for opposing the duke and recalled in an attempt to win his support earlier in the summer. He had signed the instrument recognizing Jane, but was not committed to her cause. The same was true of the earl of Pembroke, who had had his own quarrels with Northumberland,⁷ and to a lesser extent of the earls of Bedford and Shrewsbury. There was also a conservative group among the less powerful members of Edward’s council who had succeeded in avoiding more than a token involvement: Sir Thomas Cheney, Sir William Petre, Sir John Gage, Sir John Mason, Dr Nicholas Wotton and one or two more. On the other side stood Northumberland himself; his faithful but rather ineffectual associate the duke of Suffolk; William Parr, marquis of Northampton; Sir John Gates; and Sir Philip Hoby. Rather more equivocal in their views, but still deeply entangled in the plot, were the earl of Huntingdon; Walter Devereux, Viscount Hereford; Thomas Lord Darcy; Sir William Cecil; and the two ecclesiastics Cranmer and Goodrich. When the crisis came and it became clear that Mary could command and was prepared to use, a far more active support than her opponents had calculated upon, the council split. Arundel, Pembroke and Paget naturally took the lead, since they had the most to hope for and the least to fear in declaring for Mary. After that it was a question of sauve qui peut and the queen’s main problem was to know how to react to the seasoned and powerful politicians who now hastened to Framlingham to offer their services. Paget and Arundel were promptly received into favour and the latter was immediately given the responsible task of apprehending Northumberland.⁸ They may well have been sworn of the council at the same time, since no council oaths are recorded for the Framlingham period and neither appears on any subsequent list. The first record of a councillor’s oath is that of Sir Edward Hastings on 28 July.⁹ Sir Edmund Peckham, the treasurer of the mint, was sworn on the 29th and thereafter the Edwardian councillors begin to appear: the earl of Bedford on the same day and Sir William Petre and Sir John Mason on the 30th.¹⁰ By the time that Mary entered London on 3 August her council must have numbered about twenty-five, and they were already a somewhat ill-assorted team.

In most cases the queen seems to have shown good sense and discrimination. Northumberland’s belated and rather pathetic gesture of proclaiming her at Cambridge on 19 July convinced no one. The duke and all his five sons were rounded up and put on trial. Northampton, Gates, Sir Thomas Palmer and subsequently Cranmer, shared the same fate. Of those closest to Northumberland, only the duke of Suffolk escaped with a brief period of imprisonment.¹¹ Of the others who were deeply implicated, the earl of Huntingdon was committed to the Tower and the earl of Rutland to the Fleet. Viscount Hereford, Sir William Cecil and Sir John Yorke were similarly imprisoned, while Lord Darcy was placed under house arrest.¹² Northumberland himself, Gates and Palmer died immediately for their part in the conspiracy; Guildford Dudley and Jane Grey the following February. Suffolk was executed for a subsequent treason and Cranmer for heresy.¹³ All the rest made their peace with the queen in varying degrees, but none was received into high favour, or given a seat at the council board. Of the thirty-three members of Edward’s last council, twenty-two were excluded by Mary and of those only two, Lord Clinton and Dr Nicholas Wotton, subsequently regained their places.¹⁴ Between 4 August and the end of October, when the construction of the privy council was completed, six Edwardian councillors took the oath: the marquis of Winchester, the earls of Shrewsbury and Pembroke, Sir John Gage, Sir Thomas Cheney and Sir John Baker.¹⁵ For all these appointments there was good political justification, both because of the administrative continuity which they provided and because they represented Mary’s willingness to come to terms with the previous establishment. Similar reasoning would also justify the inclusion of the earl of Derby, a powerful conservative who had been kept at arm’s length by Northumberland and who had made only one brief and mysterious appearance on Edward’s council.¹⁶ He took the council oath on 17 August. However, it is very much harder to explain the appearance of the aged Thomas West, Lord La Warr, who was sworn on the same day. He was certainly a staunch catholic, but was more noted for being ‘the best housekeeper in Sussex’ than for any qualities of statesmanship. It seems that he was included more out of reward for his past constancy than in anticipation of good service and indeed he died in the following year.¹⁷ Similar sentiment probably accounts for the admission of Thomas Howard, 3rd duke of Norfolk on 10 August and of Cuthbert Tunstall, the octogenarian ex-bishop of Durham, on the 14th. Norfolk had remained in the Tower throughout Edward’s reign, until released by Mary on her arrival in London. Without waiting for the formality of reversing his attainder, the queen restored him to his former rank and to the Order of the Garter.¹⁸ Tunstall was freed and rehabilitated at the same time and with a similar lack of legal propriety.¹⁹ Neither of these ancient servants of the Crown represented a major political asset in 1553, although Tunstall was to outlive the queen and do useful work in the northern marches.

By contrast, their fellow prisoner, Stephen Gardiner, was a politician and statesman of the first rank. Eclipsed by Thomas Cromwell in the 1530s and by Seymour and Dudley in the 1540s, deprived of his bishopric of Winchester and imprisoned in 1551, he emerged in early August 1553 with his talents unimpaired, his thirst for power undiminished and with his famous irascibility markedly increased. In the circumstances of Mary’s accession Gardiner was a man whom it was impossible to ignore. On 22 July, during the uneasy calm which followed the submission of the lords in London, the Imperial ambassadors reported that he was refusing to leave the Tower without the queen’s especial command, but that in the meantime ‘the Council have conferred with him on affairs and are adopting his advice’.²⁰ Even before his release he showed every sign of bearing himself with a high hand, demanding from the earl of Pembroke the return of revenues previously confiscated from the see of Winchester, an act of presumption which several observers thought unwise.²¹ Gardiner clearly anticipated favour and high office, although there is no evidence that he had received any prior assurances to that effect. When he had been excluded from the list of Henry VIII’s executors in 1547, the dying king is alleged to have said ‘if he were in my testament and one of you, he would cumber you all and you should never rule him, he is of so troublesome a nature’…²² However, troublesome or not, he was one of the few statesmen of outstanding ability available to serve Mary and his self-assurance was swiftly justified. Released on the 3rd, he was sworn of the council on the 5th and treated from the first as though his deprivation was null and void.²³

In spite of her strong religious views, Mary cannot be accused of packing her council with clergy. Apart from Gardiner and Tunstall, only two prelates were appointed in this formative period: Nicholas Heath and Thomas Thirlby. Heath, bishop of Worcester since 1543, had suffered deprivation and imprisonment in 1551 for his opposition to the protestant ordinal. He took the oath on 4 September as bishop of Worcester, only a few days after John Hooper’s arrest and long before any legal steps could be taken for his reinstatement.²⁴ Thirlby, a professional survivor of considerable adroitness, had served on Henry’s council as a bishop of Westminster. Translated to Norwich when the see of Westminster was suppressed in 1550, he contrived to retain some favour with both Somerset and Northumberland. Although he was never a privy councillor during Edward’s reign, he did serve as ambassador at the Imperial court and was in Brussels at the time of the king’s death. Mary at first retained him in that post, but he was recalled in October 1553 and admitted to the council on the 25th of that month.²⁵ By that time the privy council numbered forty-three and at that level it was to remain with only minor fluctuations for the remainder of the reign.²⁶

This was approximately twice the size of the tightly controlled privy council of 1540, or of Elizabeth’s council at the same stage of her reign. It resembled more closely the council which Northumber-land had assembled in 1552–53 when he was bidding for support,²⁷ or the more open and undifferentiated council which had existed before 1535. The truth seems to be that at the beginning, when Mary made her first bid for the crown and before she had the benefit of any experienced advice, she raised to the status of privy councillors far more men than the situation required, several of whom could never have justified their inclusion by the standards applied after 1 August. Men such as Rochester, Waldegrave and Englef...