Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [125]
After Mass, Gardiner preached at St. Paul’s Cross, basing his sermon on the Book of Romans:
Now also it is time that we awake out of our sleep, who have slept or rather dreamed these twenty years past. For as men intending to sleep do separate themselves from company and desire to be alone, even so we have separated ourselves from the See of Rome, and have been alone, no realm in Christendom like us.
He continued:
During these twenty years we have been without a head. When King Henry was head perhaps there was something to be said for it, but what a head was Edward, to whom they had to give a protector! He was but a shadow. Nor could the Queen, being a woman, be head of the Church … now the hour is come … the realm is at peace … It is time for us also to awake.12
At the end “all those present, over fifteen thousand people, knelt down” to receive Pole’s blessing, crying out “Amen, amen!” “A sight to be seen it was, and the silence was such that not a cough was heard.”13
CHAPTER 53
THE QUEEN IS WITH CHILD
UPON HIS ARRIVAL AT WHITEHALL ON NOVEMBER 24, CARDINAL Pole had addressed Mary with the opening words of the Ave Maria: “Hail, thou art highly favored, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women,” the words by which the Angel Gabriel had heralded the Virgin Mary’s conception of Jesus. Pole’s greeting was, it seems, equally prophetic. Shortly after he left, Mary sent a messenger after him. She had felt her child stir when Pole greeted her; she knew she was pregnant.1
It followed weeks of rumor and fevered speculation. Renard had written in his dispatch in mid-September, just two months after the wedding, that one of the queen’s physicians had told him that the queen “is probably with child.” The English ambassador in Brussels, Sir John Mason, reported weeks later, in response to the emperor’s question “How goeth my daughter’s belly forward?” that although he had heard nothing formally from the queen, others had told him “her garments wax very strait.”2
With the pregnancy now seemingly confirmed, letters were sent from the Council to bishops ordering Te Deums to be sung and special prayers offered for this “good hope of certain succession” and to give thanks for her “quickening with child, and to pray.”3 The news was proclaimed across Europe. “The Queen is with child,” announced Ruy Gómez; “may it please God to grant her the issue that is so solely needed to set affairs right here and make everything smooth … this pregnancy will put a stop to every difficulty.”4 Every aspect of Mary’s appearance was scrutinized and reported on. Writing to the emperor in November, Renard told him, “There is no doubt that the Queen is with child, for her stomach clearly shows it and her dresses no longer fit her.”5 And later the same month: the “lady is well with child. God be thanked! For she has felt the babe and presents all the usual signs on her breasts and elsewhere.”6
In the days before Christmas, Mary wrote to her father-in-law:
As for that child which I carry in my belly, I declare it to be alive and with great humility thank God for His great goodness shown to me, praying Him so to guide the fruit of my womb that it may contribute to His glory and honour, and give happiness to the King, my Lord and your son, to your Majesty, who were my second father in the lifetime of my own father, and are therefore doubly my father, and lastly that it may prove a blessing to the realm.7
Charles responded with enthusiastic expectation: “Be it man, or be it woman, welcome shall it be; for by that we shall be at the least come to some certainty to whom God shall appoint by succession the government of our estates.”
It was a sentiment shared by many. As long as Mary remained childless, there was grave anxiety in the kingdom, as John Mason explained during his audience with the emperor: “It maketh all good men tremble to think the Queen’s highness must die, with whom, dying without fruit, the realm were