Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [31]
Upon his return to court, Henry explained that he had refused to see Mary on account of her obstinacy, which “came from her Spanish blood.” But when the French ambassador mentioned how “very well brought up” she was, “the tears came into his [Henry’s] eyes and he could not refrain from praising her.”7
Anne continued to resent Henry’s clear affection for his elder daughter and persisted in conspiring against her. When she heard of Mary’s defiance, she railed that “her answers could not have been made without the suggestion of others” and complained that Mary was not being kept under close enough surveillance.8 When Anne went to visit her daughter at Hatfield in March, she wasted no time in humiliating her. She “urgently solicited” Mary to visit her and “honour her as Queen,” saying that it “would be a means of reconciliation with the King, and she would intercede with him for her.” Mary replied that “she knew no other Queen in England except her mother” but that if Anne would do her that favor with her father she would be much obliged. Enraged, Anne departed, swearing that “she would bring down the pride of this unbridled Spanish blood.”9
According to a source close to Chapuys, Anne had been heard to say more than once that as soon as Henry was out of the country, leaving her as regent, she meant to use her authority to have Mary killed, “either by hunger or otherwise,” even if she, Anne, was “burnt alive for it.”10
CHAPTER 14
HIGH TRAITORS
ON MARCH 24, 1534, POPE CLEMENT VII PASSED FINAL SENTENCE on the marriage of Henry and Katherine. It “was and is valid and canonical.”1 Katherine’s cause had triumphed, but it was a hollow victory and had come too late to alter events. A week later, the Act of Succession received royal assent, endorsing exactly what the pope’s sentence had rejected. Thomas Cranmer decreed in favor of Henry’s marriage to Anne, and the succession was now transferred to Henry’s male heirs by Anne or any subsequent wife. In default of a male heir, the throne would pass to Elizabeth. Mary was excluded from the succession. An oath to the act’s contents was to be sworn by all the king’s subjects, with refusal to swear treated as high treason:
If any person or persons … do, or cause to be procured or done, any thing or things to the prejudice, slander, disturbance or derogation of the said lawful matrimony solemnised between your Majesty and the said Queen Anne, or to the peril, slander … the issues and heirs of your highness being limited to this Act … then every such person and persons … for every such offence shall be adjudged high traitors.2
On April 20, the Henrican regime made a very public display of its intent when Elizabeth Barton, known as “the Holy Maid of Kent,” and five Carthusian priests met their deaths at Tyburn, a village just outside the boundaries of London. Tied to wooden planks, they were dragged behind horses through the streets of the city for the five-mile journey from the Tower of London. Barton, a nun famous for her prophecies, had made clear her sympathy to the cause of Katherine of Aragon and had foretold plagues and disaster if the divorce went ahead. She declared that by marrying Anne, Henry had forfeited his right to rule: in God’s eyes he was no longer king, and the people should depose him. Among the charges made against her was that she had declared that “no man should fear” taking up arms on Mary’s behalf and that “she should have succour and help enough, that no man should put her from her right that she was born unto.”3
Barton had been used by opponents of the divorce, particularly by a number of monks of the Observant and Carthusian orders, who circulated accounts of the nun’s prophecies.