Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [51]
Meanwhile, Thomas Wriothesley, the earl of Southampton, was sent to Mary to instruct her that she should entertain the prospect of marriage with the Lutheran Duke Philip of Bavaria, who was in England in advance of Anne of Cleves’s arrival.17 Mary responded that although she knew the matter was of “great importance,” she “would wish and desire never to enter that kind of religion, but to continue still a maid during her life,” although she “committed herself to his majesty, her benign and merciful father.” On December 22, she agreed to meet the duke in the gardens of Westminster Abbey. Speaking partly in German with an interpreter and partly in Latin, the duke declared his intention to take Mary as his wife, if it were agreeable to her, and was bold enough to kiss her.18 When he left England in the new year, Duke Philip believed he would soon be returning to marry the princess. The French ambassador, Charles de Marillac, expected the wedding to take place within “ten or fifteen days,” and in December a draft treaty was drawn up.19
By January, word reached Rome that Mary had already married “without the advice or knowledge of the Emperor.” Chapuys sought desperately to learn if rumors of her marriage to a Lutheran duke were true. They were not. For Henry the negotiations had never been intended as anything more than a ploy to strengthen his hand against the emperor at a time when he feared a Catholic crusade against him.
Steps were also taken to suppress popular heresy and to appease conservatives at home. In the Parliament of 1539, the Act of Six Articles was passed, intended to head off the rising tide of heresy. It reaffirmed the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, with denial punishable by death by burning; rejected Communion in both kinds for the laity; required priests to remain celibate; and advocated the continued use of private Masses and auricular confession. Since the break with Rome, only John Lambert, an Anabaptist and one of Europe’s most radical heretics, had been burned for heresy. The passing of the Six Articles was intended to reassure Europe’s Catholic rulers that Henry, despite the schism, was fundamentally orthodox and they need not respond to the pope’s calls for a crusade against him.
In any event, no invasion came. The pope withheld the promised bull and recalled Cardinal Pole to Rome.20 France was unwilling to take action without a commitment from Charles, and the emperor, faced with the threat of the Ottoman Turks and the Lutherans in Germany and deteriorating relations with France, was not prepared to act against England.21 Instead, negotiations for an English alliance and a marriage with Mary were reopened with both sides.22 Yet as Marillac, the French ambassador, observed, “The King will not marry [his daughter] out of England, lest the crown of England should be claimed for her as legitimate by the Church and not of those born since the withdrawal of obedience to the Holy See, like the prince.”23 Moreover, as Henry made clear to Marillac, “I love my daughter well, but myself and honour more.” He would not declare Mary legitimate and refused to allow the invalidity of his first marriage to be doubted.24
Mary, then twenty-six, expressed her situation to one of her chamberwomen, an informant of Marillac. “It was folly to think that they would marry her out of England, or even in England,” she said, “for she would be, while her father lived, only Lady Mary, the most unhappy Lady in Christendom.”25
CHAPTER 22
FOR FEAR OF MAKING A RUFFLE IN THE WORLD
ON DECEMBER 27, 1539, ANNE OF CLEVES ARRIVED IN ENGLAND. “The day,” the duke of Suffolk reported to Cromwell, “was foul and windy, with much hail [that blew] continually in her face.”1 She journeyed to Canterbury and then to Sittingbourne