Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [41]
For most of the three years that Anne Boleyn had been queen, Mary had lived in fear of death. Now, with a new stepmother whose patrons were Mary’s leading supporters at court, there was hope of a return to favor and to the line of succession. Even before Anne’s execution, Jane had, much to Henry’s annoyance, begged for Mary’s restoration, but Henry had resisted. “She was a fool,” he declared, and “ought to solicit the advancement of the children they would have between them, and not any others.” Jane was not deterred: “in asking for the restoration of [Mary as] Princess, she conceived she was seeking the rest and tranquillity of the King, herself, her future children, and the whole realm.”26
Over the Easter holidays, April 14 to 17, Chapuys, supported by Cromwell, made overtures for a settlement between Henry and Charles V and a renewal of their earlier alliance. Three proposals were made: that Charles broker a reconciliation between Henry and the pope; that in default of male issue, “we would,” as Henry recounted, “legitimate our daughter Mary, in such degree, as in default of issue by our most dear and entirely beloved wife the Queen, she might not be reputed unable to some place in our succession”; and that Henry help Charles against the Ottoman Turks and against the anticipated French assault on Milan.27 But when, on the eighteenth, Chapuys was summoned for an audience, Henry dismissed each of the proposals and instead unleashed an attack on the emperor’s fidelity. Charles would not “have acquired the Empire or enjoyed Spain without him” but had “treated him with neglect … tried to get him declared schismatic and deprived of his kingdom”; and he had not kept his promise “not to make peace with the King of France” until Charles had obtained for Henry the crown of France. As Chapuys reported, the “Chancellor and Cromwell appeared to regret these answers, and in spite of the King’s gestures to them that they should applaud him, neither of them would say three words.”
The next day, the whole of the King’s Council was assembled for three or four hours, and, as Cromwell told Chapuys, “there was not one of them but remained long on his knees before the King to beg him, for the honour of God, not to lose so good an opportunity of establishing a friendship so necessary and advantageous.” However, no one could change the king’s mind: “he would sooner suffer all the ills in the world than confess tacitly or expressly that he had done you any injury, or that he desired this friendship.”28 He again made it clear that he would not tolerate interference from Charles:
As to the legitimisation of our daughter Mary, if she will submit to our grace, without wrestling against the determination of our laws, we will acknowledge her and use her as our daughter; but we would not be directed or pressed herein, nor have any other order devised for her entertainment, than should proceed from the inclination of our own heart being moved by her humility, and the gentle proceedings of such as pretend to be her friends.29
For Henry, to give Mary back her rights without terms was tantamount to submitting to the pope, to humbling himself before the emperor, and to climbing down in the eyes of his enemy, the king of France, and that he would never do.
CHAPTER 18
MOST HUMBLE AND OBEDIENT DAUGHTER
Master Secretary,
I would have been a suitor to you before this time, to have been a means for me to the King’s Grace, my father, to have obtained his Grace