Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [122]
Months later, it emerged that the cane play had been the occasion of a treasonous conspiracy. A man named Edward Lewkner alleged that he had arranged with Sir Francis Verney and Captain Edward Turner to kill Philip and his Spanish attendants during the contest.13 He claimed that more than three hundred people had been involved in the plot, which was to have been carried out in the third round of the tournament. But when only two rounds were staged, the plan could not be executed.14
DESPITE THE TREASONOUS plottings against him, Philip quickly began to appropriate the images of royalty. Substantial sums were spent on embroidered cloths of estate, badges, and heraldic devices decorated with the king’s and queen’s initials.15 In September 1554, new coins were issued on which both Mary and Philip appeared in profile, “the double face.”16 The king’s was pictured on the dominant left-hand side, the position hitherto reserved for the reigning monarch, with a single crown floating above them both. One pamphleteer complained that Philip was being turned into a “King of England indeed,” his name appearing on proclamations and on charters and “on the coined money going abroad current.”17
Before Mary’s wedding, Stephen Gardiner had stipulated that English subjects be explicitly assured that after the marriage Philip would be “rather as a subject than otherwise; and that the Queen should rule all things as she doth now.”18 Yet two days after the wedding the Privy Council stipulated that “a note of all such matters of Estate as should pass from hence should be made in Latin and Spanish from henceforth.”
Mary also issued an instruction, written in her own hand, to the lord Privy Seal, “First to tell the King the whole state of the Realm with all things appertaining to the same, as much as you know to be true. Second to obey his commandment in all things” and to declare his opinion on any matter the king wished “as becometh a faithful counsellor to do.”19 The Spaniards’ view of the marriage was quite different from that of the English. They believed that Philip would provide the male element lacking in Mary’s monarchy: he would “make up for other matters which are impertinent to women.”20
The focus of Philip’s energies quickly became reconciliation with Rome. He petitioned the pope to augment Cardinal Pole’s powers so that he might negotiate for a general settlement with regard to Church property.21 Finally the pope was persuaded. “It would be far better,” he agreed, “for all reasons human and divine, to abandon all the Church property [in England], rather than risk the shipwreck of this understanding.”22 Philip sent Renard to Flanders to reason with Pole, who agreed not to exercise any jurisdiction without the king and queen’s consent.23 On November 3, 1554, the Council consented to admitting Pole into the realm. Lord Paget and Sir Edward Hastings were sent to conduct him from the imperial court, and Parliament was summoned to repeal Pole’s attainder and condemnation for treason.
England’s imminent return to Roman Catholicism was a tremendous coup for the Habsburgs. As Renard wrote to the emperor:
I thought it my duty to write at once to Your Majesty, well knowing that this long looked for miraculous event, so big with consequences of the greatest importance to Christendom, will give you great pleasure…. Your Majesty too well understands how great was the joy felt by the King [Philip] and all his court for it to be necessary that I