Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [34]
Mine especial friend, you have greatly bound me with the pains, that you have taken in speaking to the King my Lord concerning the coming of my daughter with me…. As touching the answer, which has been made you, that his Highness is contented to send her to some place near me, for as long as I do not see her; I pray you, vouchsafe to give unto his Highness mine effectual thanks for the goodness which he showeth unto his daughter and mine, and for the comfort that I have thereby received … you shall certify that, if she were within one mile of me, I would not see her.
Katherine had wanted Mary to be brought to her, she said, as a “little comfort and mirth” would “undoubtedly be half a health unto her,” explaining “I have proved the like by experience, being diseased of the same infirmity.” Both mother and daughter suffered from “deep melancholy.”
Katherine told Cromwell that she did not understand how Henry could distrust them or why he would not allow mother and daughter to be together:
Here have I, among others, heard that he had some suspicion of the surety of her. I cannot believe that a thing so far from reason should pass from the royal heart of his highness; neither can I think that he hath so little confidence in me. If any such matter chance to be communed of, I pray you say unto his highness that I am determined to die (without doubt) in this realm; and that I, from henceforth, offer mine own person for surety, to the intent that, if any such thing should be attempted, that then he do justice of me, as of the most evil woman that ever was born.6
Mary received word through Lady Shelton that the king now regarded her as his “worst enemy.” She had already succeeded in turning most of the Christian princes of Europe against him, and he believed “her conduct was calculated to encourage conspiracy.”7 Cromwell openly lamented the fact that, by their very existence, Katherine and Mary were preventing good relations between England and the Holy Roman Empire. If Mary were to die, it would do far less harm than good, as the immediate result would be a treaty of mutual goodwill between Henry and Charles.8 If only God had “taken them to himself,” Cromwell cursed, no one would have questioned Henry’s marriage to Anne or the right of their daughter to succeed him; the possibility of internal revolt and war with the emperor would never have arisen.9
By early January 1535, Henry was losing patience. Mary was told that she must take the oath and “on pain of her life she must not call herself Princess or her mother Queen but that if ever she does she will be sent to the Tower.”10
THE ACT OF SUPREMACY, passed in November 1534, authorized the king to assume the Supreme Headship of the Church and repudiated any “foreign laws or foreign authority to the contrary.” Another act established an oath of obedience to the king, which involved a renunciation of the power of any “foreign authority or potentate”—that is, the pope—as well as an endorsement of the Boleyn marriage and the succession. Moreover, by the Treasons Act it was now treasonable, either by overt act or by malicious “wish, will or desire, by words or in writing,” to do harm to Henry, Anne, or their heirs, to deprive the king of his titles (including supreme head) or to call him heretic, tyrant, or usurper.11 To deny the royal supremacy, even to fail to acknowledge it, was high treason. The stakes had risen.
The first victims of the new treason laws were John Fisher, bishop of Rochester, and the humanist and former lord chancellor Thomas More; both were high-profile opponents of the royal divorce and supporters of Katherine and Mary. They were condemned for refusing to swear to the Act of Succession and for their denial of Henry as supreme head of the English Church. As he faced the block on Tower Hill in June 1535, Fisher addressed the gathered crowd: “Christian people, I am come hither to die for the