Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [32]
On the same day the citizens of London were required to make the Oath of Succession.5 The executions were intended as a warning to those who opposed the king’s policies and reforms. Barton’s head was impaled on a railing at London Bridge, and the heads of her followers were placed on the gates of the city.6
AS THE ACT OF Succession was passed, Thomas Cromwell, the king’s principal secretary and chief minister, made a note to “send a copy of the act of the King’s succession to the Princess Dowager and the Lady Mary, with special commandment that it may be read in their presence and their answer taken.”7 Commissioners were sent to Katherine at Buckden and directed to beseech her to have, above all, “regard for her honourable and most dear daughter the Lady Princess. From whom … the King’s highness … might also withdraw his princely estimation, goodness, zeal and affection, [with] no little regret, sorrow and extreme calamity.”8
In response to this clear threat made against her daughter, Katherine reiterated that Mary “was the King’s true begotten Child, and as God had given her unto the King, as his daughter, to do with her as shall stand with his pleasure, trusting to God that she will prove an honest woman.”9 After refusing to sign the oath, Katherine told the commissioners, “If any one of you has a commission to execute this penalty upon me, I am ready. I ask only that I be allowed to die in the sight of the people.” Weeks later, she was moved from Buckden to Kimbolton in Huntingdonshire, another gloomy fortified manor house, with thick walls and a wide moat.10
Meanwhile, Mary stood firm. As Chapuys described it, “Some days ago the King asked his mistress’s [aunt], who has charge of the Princess, if the latter had abated her obstinacy, and on being answered ‘No,’ he said there must be someone about her who encouraged her and conveyed news from the Queen her mother.” Lady Shelton suspected one of the maids of the household, who in turn was quickly dismissed. “The Princess has been much grieved at this,” Chapuys reported, “for she was the only one in whom she had confidence, and by her means she had letters from me and others.”
Faced with Mary’s intransigence and realizing that he could get his way “neither by force nor menaces,” Henry changed tack and began to beg her to “lay aside her obstinacy” on the promise that she would be rewarded with “a royal title and dignity.” But Mary refused to yield: “God had not so blinded her as to confess for any kingdom on earth that the King her father and the Queen her mother had so long lived in adultery, nor would she contravene the ordinance of the Church and make herself a bastard.” As the ambassador explained, “She believes firmly that this dissimulation the King uses is only the more easily to attain his end and cover poison, but she says she cares little, having full confidence in God that she will go straight to Paradise and be quit of the tribulations of this world, and her only grief is about the troubles of the Queen her mother.”11
WHEN EMPEROR CHARLES V complained once more to Henry about his ill-treatment of Mary and Katherine, the king responded scathingly, “It is not a little to our marvel that, touching the fact, either the Emperor, or any of his wise council learned, or other discreet person would in anything think us, touching our proceeding therein, but that which is godly, honourable and reasonable.”12
But the ill-treatment continued. By the middle of May, Katherine’s household and Mary’s remaining servants were made to swear to the act. Several men and women were committed to the Tower charged with holding private conversations with the Lady Mary and