Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [138]
—GIOVANNI MICHIELI, MARCH 17, 1556
ON MARCH 5, 1556, A BLAZING COMET APPEARED IN THE SKY OVER London. Night after night for a week it shone, and Londoners looked up at it with “great wonder and astonishment.”2 These were fearful and uncertain times; “the stout and devilish hearts of the people of England” were once again ready “to work treason and make insurrections.”3 Yet what was initially thought to be civil unrest in London would reveal itself to be much more: a plot to overthrow Mary.
Born of political disaffection and Protestant intrigue, the conspiracy sought to exploit the popular discontent that had been growing since the previous summer. “The greatest rain and floods that ever was seen in England … [in which] both men and cattle drowned” had led to poor harvests and famine across England.4 Mary’s pregnancy had been unsuccessful, the peace conference at La Marque had failed, and the religious persecution continued with the burnings of Bishops Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer. Renard warned that “unless steps are taken to remedy this state of affairs, it is impossible that trouble will not ensue … all the executions have hardened many hearts, for it has been seen how constant, or rather stubborn, these heretics prove at the stake.” He had, the ambassador concluded, “never seen the people in such an ugly mood as they are at present.”5 Rumors of sedition and incipient rebellion became commonplace amid growing fears that Philip was to be crowned. When Parliament met in October 1555, rumors circulated that the demand of a subsidy was for the king’s coronation.6
A few days into the parliamentary session, the Privy Council, fearing insurrection, closed all houses of public dancing and gambling in London on the grounds that they provided opportunities for seditious assemblies.7 At the same time, three Suffolk men were imprisoned in the Tower, one of them having declared on the day Parliament opened that “to free the kingdom from oppression it would be well to kill the Queen.”8 Seditious pamphlets, written by English exiles and filled with accounts of Habsburg tyranny in Naples and Milan, circulated on the streets of London.9 By the end of October, the queen had abandoned all hope of persuading Parliament to consider Philip’s coronation. She remained determined, however, to pass bills allowing crown lands and revenues to be returned to the Church and for the estates of Protestant exiles who had fled abroad to be confiscated.
The death on the night of November 12 of the lord chancellor, Stephen Gardiner, made Mary’s task even more difficult. His health had been failing since the spring, and he had struggled to speak at the opening of Parliament. Without her primary supporter, Mary was left to face the Commons alone. Her determination to restore the crown lands was matched by the Commons’ reluctance to let them go for fear that they would have to give up their own gains.10 Though Mary succeeded in passing this bill, the other great measure, the exiles bill, was defeated after Sir Anthony Kingston, a member of the Commons, locked the doors of the chamber, forcing a division. Three days later, Parliament was dissolved and Kingston was imprisoned in the Tower.
By the new year, discontentment had deepened. In January, as the pace of religious persecution quickened, the Council decreed that the queen’s pardon should no longer be offered to heretics at the stake because of the contempt with which the offer was habitually treated. Moreover, it ordered that those in the crowds at the burnings who were understood to be “comforting, aiding or praising the offenders, or otherwise use themselves to the ill example of others” would be imprisoned.11 On January 27, seven people—five men and two women—were burned at Smithfield and a few days later five more at Canterbury. In February, the Treaty of Vaucelles, by which hostilities between France