Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [104]
entirely vain for you to nominate a prospective husband for me from your own fancy, but rather let it be my free choice to select a worthy husband for my bridal bed—one who will not only join with me in mutual love, but will be able with his own resources to prevent an enemy attack, from his native land.3
She warned that “if she were married against her will she would not live three months and she would have no children.” Her affairs had been conducted by divine disposition, and she would pray to God to counsel and inspire her in her choice of husband, “who would be beneficial to the kingdom and agreeable to herself … for she always thought of the welfare of her kingdom, as a good princess and mistress should.”4 Her riposte was so extraordinary that Pollard was rendered speechless and the deputation retired.
Mary suspected that Gardiner had inspired the speaker’s words and afterward challenged him directly. “She would never marry Courtenay,” she told him; “she never practiced hypocrisy or deceit, and had preferred to speak her mind, and she had come near to being angry on hearing such disrespectful words.”5 Mary asked him crossly, “Is it suitable, that I should be forced to marry a man because a bishop made friends with him in prison?” Courtenay was, she said, of “small power and authority,” and, given the intrigues of the French and the poverty of the kingdom, would not be the most desirable match.
Gardiner tearfully admitted that he had spoken with Pollard but now accepted that “it would not be right to try to force her in one direction or another.” He now swore to “obey the man she had chosen.”6 The Commons’ petition proved futile; Mary had already made her decision. On the day after Parliament was dissolved, her betrothal was made public.
MARY’S REBUTTAL OF the Commons’ challenge enhanced her authority. Never before had a Tudor ruler flaunted popular opinion, as expressed by Parliament, so openly. In the face of the Commons’ delegation, Mary had claimed the right to marry whomever she wished. By maintaining that she would marry as God directed her, “to his honour and to our country’s good,” she argued that her private inclination and the public welfare were compatible. But many within and outside the court remained discontented. As one contemporary observed, “This marriage was not well thought of by the Commons, nor much better liked by many of the nobility.”7
At end of the year, Mary wrote to Henry II, assuring him that her marriage to Philip would not alter her desire for amicable relations with France. Henry was not convinced. He told Sir Nicholas Wotton “that he clearly saw that she was allying herself with the greatest enemy he had in the world, and he knew marital authority to be very strong with ladies. He had not thought she would choose a match so odious to him.”8 As Renard reported, the French ambassador “is plotting openly against the alliance, and has spoken to several councillors and nobles to whom he has rehearsed all imaginable disadvantages,” spreading fears that England would be forced into war against France and that the country would become ever more subject to Spanish rule.9
When the imperial delegation arrived in the City of London to sign the marriage treaty on January 2, 1554, it was received coldly. The people, “nothing rejoicing, held down their heads sorrowfully.” As the retinue rode through the capital, “boys pelted them with snowballs; so hateful was the sight of their coming in to them.”10
Henry, meanwhile, instructed his ambassador:
If you see that the Queen is resolved to marry the Prince of Spain and also that there is likelihood that Courtenay has the will and means to upset the apple-cart, you may say still more confidently that you are sure that for such a great benefit to the realm [of England] I would not deny my favour either to him or to the other gentlemen who know the