London - Edward Rutherfurd [324]
Nor when the Protestant boy king died and his sister Mary came to the throne, did Susan allow herself to rejoice too soon. True, Mary as the daughter of poor, Spanish Queen Katherine, was a devout Catholic. True, she swore to return England to the true Church of Rome. “But her nature is obstinate,” Susan judged, “and I fear she will handle the business badly.” And alas, that was how it turned out. Despite the protests of her people, she insisted upon marrying King Philip of Spain. The Catholic cause from now on, in the minds of many Englishmen, came to mean that they would be subject not only to a Pope, but to a foreign king as well. Then came the burnings of Protestants. All the leaders of the reform were sentenced. When Cranmer burned, she felt sorry for him. When cruel old Latimer went to the stake she only shrugged. “He did worse to others.” But soon the English were calling their queen “Bloody Mary”; and when, after five unhappy years, she died childless, it did not at all surprise Susan that England’s religion was still an open question.
There remained only one of King Harry’s children, Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn, and Susan was sure that she could not return England to Rome. For if the Pope in Rome were the true authority, then her mother’s marriage to the old king must have been invalid. She herself, therefore, would be a bastard and could not legitimately sit on England’s throne. The religious settlement that Elizabeth constructed was perfectly logical, therefore. The question of the Mass was described by a formula so mysterious that with enough good will you could read it either way. A degree of religious ceremony was maintained. The Pope’s authority was denied, but Elizabeth tactfully called herself Supreme Governor, instead of Supreme Head of the English Church. To Catholics therefore she could say: “I have given you a reformed Catholicism.” To Protestants: “The Pope is denied.” Or as Susan put it drily: “Bastard child; bastard Church.”
Yet even Susan had to admit, Elizabeth was showing wisdom. For as the whole of Europe drew into two huge, and increasingly hostile religious camps, the position of England’s queen was not an easy one. While she temporized with the great Catholic powers and even hinted that she might marry one of their princes and return England to Rome, she was faced in London and the other cities with an increasingly Protestant people. This was not surprising. Intelligent merchants and artisans, having once got their English Bible and Book of Common Prayer, liked thinking for themselves. Their trading partners, in the Low Countries, in Germany, even in France, were often Protestant too. Gradually the more extreme forms of Protestantism made headway. Puritans, these people began to call themselves. Even if she had hated the Protestants – and secretly she was in sympathy with them – Elizabeth could not have stopped this development without resorting to tyranny and bloodshed.
So instead, she and her wise minister, the great Cecil, had adopted an English compromise. “We do not seek to look into men’s hearts,” they said. “But outward conformity we must require.” It was a humane and necessary policy; and even Susan, on the whole, was grateful for it. So that, to her own surprise, when the Pope in Rome grew impatient with the English queen and threatened excommunication if she did not return her kingdom to the fold, Susan found herself saying irritably: “I wish he would not.”
Only one thing, in those years, drew from her a cry of fury. This was the publication, in 1563, of a single, stout book. It was known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs; and it was an astonishing feat of propaganda. For this book, carefully written to evoke every man’s pity and rage, described in detail the martyrs of England – by which it meant those Protestants who had perished