Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [129]
THE OUTCOME OF the pregnancy had been of central importance to the peace negotiations between the French king and emperor, held under English auspices at La Marque in May. The latest round of hostilities, which had erupted in 1551, had reached a stalemate. The birth of an heir to the English throne would have given the emperor immense benefit, but if the queen and child died, the advantage would be with the French.
For the English, a great deal was at stake: the revival of England’s prestige in continental politics, an improvement of relations with France, and, of greatest importance, the prevention of a new war in which Spain might try to involve England. But as the negotiations continued, it became clear that neither the Habsburgs nor the Valois were willing to give much ground. As the talks reached an impasse, news came at the beginning of June of Mary’s failed pregnancy and of the election of Giovanni Pietro Carafa, a seventy-nine-year-old Neapolitan and great enemy of the Habsburgs, as pope. The conference came to an abrupt end: the French had lost their fear.
Now, with no immediate prospect of an heir, Philip prepared to depart England for the Low Countries. Nervous of informing Mary of his intentions, he rehearsed how he would tell her in a draft letter, sent probably to Ruy Gómez: “Let me know what line I am to take with the Queen about leaving her and about religion. I see I must say something, but God help me!”18 Philip decided to leave most of his household in the hope of convincing the queen that he would return quickly. Yet, as the Venetian ambassador reported, “it is said more than ever, that he will go to Spain, and remove thence his household and all the others by degrees.”19
Philip would be leaving England with the Catholic restoration achieved and the enforcement of Catholic obedience under way. Six months before, the medieval treason laws, repealed by Edward VI, had been restored. The secular authorities were empowered once more to deal ruthlessly with religious opponents: seditious words and activities would be punished. With the rising threat of disorder and rebellion, the restoration of Catholicism was to take on a ferocious edge: heretics would be burned alive.
CHAPTER 55
BLOOD AND FIRE
ON MONDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1555, JOHN ROGERS, CANON OF ST. PAUL’S, was led out to Smithfield, condemned as a heretic. Great crowds lined the streets to watch the procession, among them his wife and eleven children. As he stood at the stake, he was offered a pardon on condition that he recanted, but he refused. He exhorted the people to stand firm in the faith that he had taught them. When the fire took hold of his body, he “washed his hands in the flame as he was in burning.”1 As Renard related, “Some of the onlookers wept; others prayed God to give him strength, perseverance and patience to bear the pain and not to recant; others gathered the ashes and bones and wrapped them up to preserve them.”2
Rogers’s death was followed just days later by those of two country parsons—Laurence Saunders, the rector of All Hallows in Coventry, and Dr. Rowland Taylor, the rector of Hadleigh, Suffolk—and by the former bishop of Worcester and Gloucester, John Hooper. Each was burned in the district in which he had first officiated.
Hooper, like the other condemned martyrs, had denied papal supremacy over the Church and the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. He was imprisoned in the Fleet on September 1, 1553, and remained there for more than seventeen months. At the end of January 1555, he was brought before Stephen Gardiner and a number of other bishops and urged to give up his “evil and corrupt doctrine” and to conform to the Catholic Church.3 If he recanted, he would have the queen’s mercy. He refused, and on February 9 he was burned. Standing on a high stool and looking over the crowd of several thousand that had gathered to watch him, he prayed.