Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [150]
The first few days of November saw some alleviation in the queen’s condition, and as Parliament met, the Council petitioned her to make “certain declarations in favour of the Lady Elizabeth concerning the succession.” On November 6, Mary bowed to the inevitable: she “consented” and accepted Elizabeth as her heir. It was what she had fought to avoid most of her life, but now, realizing that death was near, she had no choice. Sir Thomas Cornwallis, the comptroller of the royal household, and John Boxall, secretary to the Privy Council, were sent to Hatfield to give Elizabeth the news. Mary asked that Elizabeth pay her debts and keep the Catholic religion as it had been established.9 She knew it was a futile plea.
While Mary lay dying, the court began to move to Hatfield, as “many personages of the kingdom flocked to the house of ‘milady’ Elizabeth, the crowd constantly increasing with great frequency.”10
CHAPTER 66
REASONABLE REGRET FOR HER DEATH
JUST BEFORE MIDNIGHT ON WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1557, MARY received the last rites in her chamber at St. James’s Palace. A few hours later, between five and six in the morning, she died. She was forty-two.
During her last few days, the celebration of Mass had been at the center of her conscious existence, and as dawn broke on Thursday morning, she had lifted her eyes at the Elevation of the Host for the final time. According to one later account, she had “comforted those of them that grieved about her, she told them what good dreams she had, seeing many little children, like Angels playing before her, singing pleasing notes.”1 Hours later, the lord chancellor, Nicholas Heath, announced to Parliament that Mary was dead. Any sorrow that might have been felt was quickly overshadowed by rejoicing for the accession of a new queen.
At Whitehall, Elizabeth was formally proclaimed as heralds rode out to the cross at Cheapside to make the announcement before the lord mayor and aldermen of the city.2 By midafternoon, “all the churches in London did ring, and at night did make bonfires and set tables in the street, and did eat and drink and made merry for the new Queen Elizabeth, Queen Mary[’s] sister.”3 Just six hours after Mary’s death, Elizabeth was proclaimed queen.
Across the river at Lambeth Palace, Cardinal Pole also lay dying. The news of the queen’s passing appeared to hurry his own demise. For nearly a quarter of an hour he remained silent, absorbing what he had just heard; “though his spirit was great, the blow nevertheless having entered his flesh, brought on the paroxysm earlier, and with more intense cold.” Turning to Ludovico Priuli and Thomas Goldwell, bishop of St. Asaph, two of his closest attendants, he remarked on the symmetry, the “great conformity,” as he described it, of their lives. She, like himself, “had been harassed during many years for one and the same cause, and afterwards, when it pleased God to raise her to the throne, he had greatly participated in all her other troubles entailed by that elevation.”4 Just twelve hours after Mary’s passing, he too died, unreconciled with and condemned by the pope.
A messenger was sent to Philip with news of his wife’s death. Just weeks before, both his father, the Emperor Charles V, and his aunt Margaret of Flanders, the regent of the Netherlands, had also died. “You may imagine what a state I am in,” he wrote to his sister in Spain; “it seems to me that everything is being taken from me at once.” Of Mary he added, “May God have received her in His glory! I felt a reasonable regret for her death. I shall miss her, even on this account.”5 Mary remained second to Habsburg strategic interests; Philip’s comments were made in the middle of a paragraph detailing progress in the peace negotiations at Cercamp. He instructed Feria to secure the jewels that Mary had bequeathed him in her will and to represent