Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [50]
HENRY NOW TOOK action against the old Catholic families of royal Plantagenet blood, the Poles, Nevilles, and Courtenays, who had long been objects of suspicion for their loyalty to Katherine of Aragon and Mary. Reginald Pole had denounced Henry’s tyranny and heresy in the bitterest terms and, according to reports by the emperor’s agents, had hoped that the unrest in England might lead to “his marrying the princess himself.”7 As John Wroth wrote in a letter to Lord Lisle, who was in Calais on May 18, “Pole intended to have married my old lady Mary and betwixt them both should again arise the old doctrine of Christ.”8 It was such a union, or a rising in support of Mary against Edward’s succession, that the regime particularly feared.
In late August 1538, Sir Geoffrey Pole, the younger brother of Reginald, was arrested for treason and imprisoned in the Tower. Under interrogation he implicated his elder brother Henry Pole, Lord Montague; Sir Edward Neville, Montague’s brother-in-law; and Henry Courtenay, marquess of Exeter—the king’s cousin—in an alleged conspiracy that sought to deprive the king of his supremacy and marry Mary to Reginald Pole. By November 4, Exeter, his wife, Gertrude, and their twelve-year-old son, Edward, were committed to the Tower. Soon after, the elderly countess of Salisbury was interrogated and her house searched. She was convicted without trial of aiding and abetting her sons Henry and Reginald and of having “committed and p[er]petrated div[er]se and sundry other detestable and abominable treasons” and was imprisoned also.9 On Monday, December 9, Montague, Sir Edward Neville, and Exeter were tried and, having received unanimous guilty verdicts—on the basis of remarks such as “I like well the proceedings of Cardinal Pole”—were executed at Tower Hill.10
Two days after Christmas, Reginald Pole set out again secretly from Rome to rally the Catholic powers against “the most cruel and abominable tyrant” the king of England.11 In the Pact of Toledo in January 1539, Charles and Francis agreed to make no further agreements with England. It seemed that a crusade, termed the “Enterprise of England,” was about to begin.12 The pope was determined to “chastise the irreverence and extravagance of the King of England.”13 Counties were mustered, defenses were strengthened, and the country prepared for war. Meanwhile, diplomatic overtures were made to the Schmalkaldic League of German princes and any other rulers opposed to Charles or the pope.
On New Year’s Eve, Sir Nicholas Carew, a onetime royal favorite, was apprehended and questioned. A letter had allegedly been found at the home of the marchioness of Exeter that implicated him in the treason for which the marquess had been executed earlier in the month. Carew was tried and convicted on February 14, 1539, and beheaded on Tower Hill three weeks later. For Mary, the execution of so many of those who had supported her and her mother served as a sharp reminder of her father’s capacity for vengeance and cruelty. As Chapuys reflected, “It would seem that they want to leave her as few friends as possible.”14
WITH RENEWED FEARS of war against him, Henry was keen to secure alliances among the Lutheran princes in Germany. In mid-January 1539, the English ambassador Christopher Mont was sent to the duke of Saxony to discuss the prospect of a double match between Henry and the duke of Cleves’s eldest daughter, Anne, and between Mary and the young duke of Cleves himself.15 Cromwell instructed Mont to make clear that although Mary was “only the King’s natural daughter”—meaning she was not of “princely status”—she was “endowed, as all the world knows, with such beauty, learning and virtues, that when the rest was agreed, no man would stick for any part concerning her beauty and goodness.”16
Though the negotiations for a marriage with Mary and the young duke of Cleves came to nothing, by the autumn an alliance had been secured between