THE BLOG
Extra material for The Queen’s Sorrow
Mary Tudor was England’s first ruling queen: something that most of us forget, if we ever knew it. Her five-year reign, overshadowed by that of her half-sister Elizabeth, is notorious for the burning at the stake of almost three hundred ‘heretics’. For many of us who do know something of Mary, it’s only that she’s ‘Bloody Mary’. She remains so, for the English, even after almost five hundred years. There is no national monument to her, nor was there ever.
For those who know a little about her, it’s probably that – to say the least – she wasn’t glamorous. She was obsessively hard-working and intensely religious (Catholic, no less). In her younger years, she’d been blighted by her parents’ protracted, bitter and lamentably public divorce. Decades of disinheritance had followed, and what was effectively internal exile, during which time her practice of her religion – her chief comfort in life – was increasingly hampered. By middle-age, when she came to the throne, she was in poor physical and mental health, living only for the restoration of Catholicism in England. Then, during her years as queen, came the longing for a man who was clearly only doing his job in marrying her, the pitiable phantom pregnancies, and the signing of all those death warrants along with letters chiding law-enforcers for not pursuing the burnings more vigorously.
In the English popular imagination, Mary is, at best, embarrassing, and at worst, repugnant. Think Kathy Burke’s portrayal in the film ‘Elizabeth’.
But the truth is more complicated. (Isn’t it always.) Mary inspired devoted service and lifelong loyalty from those who worked for her. Regardless of differences of religious persuasion, almost everyone who knew her personally was impressed by her (one exception being her half-sister). She was generous and patient, interested in people and their children. When she came to the throne, she appointed an unmanageably large council – comprised just as much of those whose views were opposed to her own as those with whom she had an affinity – and insisted always upon consultation. In the early years of her reign, she was notably merciful, in the face of a good deal of disapproval from all quarters. She never had any interest in the trappings of power, seeking only to do what she saw as her job. And her job, as she saw it, was to do right.
All very admirable. How did it happen, then, that this woman – whose proclamation as queen caused jubilation among Londoners such as had never been seen before – was within five years reviled, and her country under martial law? What went so badly wrong?
Well, she was a woman. No one in England – including Mary herself – knew what to expect of a woman ruler. A little later, Elizabeth would face the same problem, but she had the time (and the confidence, the daring, and the wit) to develop her own complex strategy. Mary, coming to the throne in her late thirties, didn’t have time on her side, and was desperate to keep everyone happy. Should she – lifelong spinster – get married? Yes, to provide an heir and thereby the stability that England had so damagingly lacked for decades. But no, if it meant compromising England’s independence. And surely it did mean that, because at that time a wife was expected to obey her husband.
After much agonising and praying for guidance, Mary decided to marry, and decided to accept the offer of her nephew, Philip, the Spanish heir. Spain, of course, was Catholic, and it was the empire. Opposition in England was vociferous.
If Mary couldn’t perhaps have done right over the issue of marriage, there’s no such excuse for her other fundamental political misjudgement. She misread the people’s celebration of her coming to the throne – the triumph of the underdog, the succession of the rightful heir – for an endorsement of her counter-reformation (the restoration of Catholicism, the return of England to Rome). During the previous decade or two, Protestantism had become more deep-rooted in England than she could understand. The more she cracked down, the more opposition grew, but still she failed to grasp it. She ended up acting in isolation, against all counsel including that of her most conservative Catholic mainstays and even the Spaniards. The burnings only stopped with her own death.
If all that wasn’t bad enough, the weather wasn’t on her side – and that’s the understatement of five centuries. The weather during the mid-1550s was appalling, the summers drenched. Successive harvests failed, bringing England to the brink of famine. The populations of the cities were swollen by the destitute and despairing.
And into this chaos came the hapless Spaniards in Philip’s retinue, under strict orders from their prince to keep their heads down and behave as the perfect guests. Unfortunately, there were far more of them than London – xenophobic at the best of times – could accommodate, because someone had failed to pass on to Philip that the queen would be providing a full household for him, but declining (due to council’s opposition) to fund it. So, Philip was stuck with two expensive households, the English workers determined that the foreigners wouldn’t take their places at court and their livelihoods. The mood was ugly: the Spaniards lived in real, physical danger. Most of them should’ve been sent home but, for various on-going political and economic reasons, any return kept being postponed. So there they were, for more than a year: stuck in a hostile London, daily being fleeced, harrassed and set upon, living amid increasing unrest, enduring relentless rain and a consequent lack of fresh food.
I was fascinated to read about the experience of the Spaniards in London in 1554/5, and decided to write a novel set during Mary’s reign from the viewpoint of one of these homesick visitors…