Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [103]
FINALLY, ON THE EVENING of Sunday, October 29, Mary sent again for Renard. He found her in her chamber alone, save for Susan Clarencius, her trusted lady-in-waiting. The room was barely lit. A lamp shone in one corner, its glow illuminating the Holy Sacrament, which stood on the altar before them. It was a momentous decision for Mary, both as a woman and as a queen. Her Council and even most of her trusted household servants opposed the match; it could be expected that the country would too. Ever since the emperor’s letter had arrived, she had not slept. Instead she woke, weeping and praying for guidance. Now all three knelt before the sacrament, singing “Veni Creator Spiritus”—“Come, Holy Spirit, eternal God.” Rising to her feet, Mary announced her decision. She had, she declared, been inspired by God to be Prince Philip’s wife. “She believed what I have told her of his Highness’s qualities,” Renard explained, “and that your Majesty would ever show her kindness, observe the conditions that would safeguard the welfare of the country, be a good father to her as you had been in the past and more, now that you would be doubly her father and cause his highness to be a good husband to her.” Now that her mind had been made up, “she would never change but love him perfectly and never give him cause to be jealous.”16
Two days later Mary hastily wrote to Renard, revealing her anxious excitement:
Sir: I forgot to ask you one question the other night: that is to say, are you quite sure that there has never been any contract concerning marriage between the Prince and the daughter of Portugal, for there was much talk to that effect? I request you to write me the truth, on your faith and conscience, for there is nothing else in the world that could make me break the promise I made to you, so may God of His grace assist me! I also pray you to send me your advice as to how I shall broach this matter to the Council, for I have not yet begun to do so with any of them, but wish to speak to them before they speak to me.
Written in haste, this All Saints Eve,
Your good friend, Mary,
Queen of England.17
CHAPTER 44
A SUITABLE PARTNER IN LOVE
In the beginning of November was the first notice among the people touching the marriage of the Queen to the King of Spain.1
—RESIDENT OF THE TOWER OF LONDON, 1553
ON NOVEMBER 16, 1553, MARY FACED A DEPUTATION OF SOME twenty members of the Commons seeking to dissuade her from marrying Philip. She had postponed the meeting for three weeks, claiming ill health; now she could delay no more. As Sir John Pollard, the speaker of the Commons, put it, it would displease the people to have a foreigner as the queen’s consort. If Mary died childless, her husband would deplete the country of money and arms. He might decide to remove Mary from the kingdom “out of husbandly tyranny,” and if he were left a widower with young children, he might try to usurp the crown for himself.2 Instead, the speaker argued, it would be better for the queen to marry an Englishman. Mary listened to Pollard’s long speech with exasperation. As she later told Renard, his discourse had been “so confused, so long-winded and prolific of irrelevant arguments,” that she had found it irritating and offensive.
Finally, when Pollard had finished and without waiting for the chancellor to answer on her behalf, Mary rose to address the assembly. She thanked it for encouraging her to marry but, as she went on, she said that she did not appreciate the idea that it should attempt to choose “a companion” for her “conjugal bed.” As she declared, “I now rule over you by the best right possible, and being a free woman, if any man or woman of the people of our realm is