Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [68]
Queen Mary I by Hans Eworth: A PORTRAIT OF A MAGNIFICENT QUEEN. SHE LOVED TO DRESS EXTRAVAGANTLY AND KNEW THE IMPORTANCE OF DISPLAYING A STRIKING IMAGE OF ROYAL MAJESTY. MARY IS AGAIN PICTURED WITH THE PENDANT JEWEL THAT SHE HAD RECEIVED FROM PHILIP. (photo credit 1.17)
The signature of Mary I. (photo credit 1.18)
The head of Mary’s funeral effigy, displayed at Westminster Abbey. (photo credit 1.19)
The tomb of Mary and Elizabeth at Westminster Abbey: ELIZABETH’S BODY WAS MOVED HERE BY JAMES I, THREE YEARS AFTER HER DEATH, BUT MARY’S PRESENCE IS BARELY ACKNOWLEDGED. (photo credit 1.20)
CHAPTER 28
ADVICE TO BE CONFORMABLE
ON JUNE 9, 1549, THE DAY THE FIRST ENGLISH PRAYER BOOK became law, Mary celebrated Latin Mass in her chapel at Kenninghall amid incense, candles, and the chiming of bells. In doing so she publicly signaled her opposition to the religious changes and defied Edward’s authority as king. The Privy Council responded swiftly. In a letter dated June 16, Mary was given “advice to be conformable and obedient” to the law: Mass was no longer to be celebrated in her house. Her comptroller, Robert Rochester, and her chaplain, Dr. John Hopton, were summoned to court to receive further instructions.1
A week later, addressing Somerset and the rest of Edward’s Council, Mary responded directly to their charges:
My Lorde, I perceive by the letters which I late received from you, and all of the king’s Majesty’s council that you be all sorry to find so little conformity in me touching the observation of his Majesty’s laws; who am well assured that I have offended no law, unless it be a late law of your own making, for the altering of matters in religion which in my conscience, is not worthy to have the name of a law, both for the King’s honour’s sake, the wealth of the realm … and (as my conscience is very well persuaded) the offending of God, which passes all the rest.
She would not change her practices and would obey only her father’s laws, and she trusted that the Council would “no more to trouble and unquiet” her with “matters touching her conscience.” She excused from obedience the two men whose presence the Council had demanded: Hopton because of his ill health, Rochester because “the chief charge of my house resteth upon his travails.”2 In a subsequent letter to Somerset and the Privy Council, she expressed her anger and disappointment: “For my part I assure you all, that since the King my father, your late master and very good Lord died I never took you for other than my friends; but in this it appeareth co[n]trary.”3
Days later, Lord Rich, the lord chancellor, and Sir William Petre, the first secretary, were sent to visit Mary at Kenninghall. Their brief was to challenge the points she had made in her previous letter, to induce her to comply with the new regulations, and to make her servants aware of the danger of disobeying the law.4 In their “Remembrance for certain matters appointed by the Council to be declared to Dr Hopton to the Lady Mary’s Grace for Answer to her former letter,” the Privy Council rebuffed her objections point by point, yet Mary remained immovable and resistant to any such pressure.5 She was determined to defend her servants’ rights to the free practice of their religion. She described her staff as “worthy people, ready to serve their King after their God to the whole extent of their power”; they were “as her own kin” whom she would stand by. When Rochester and Hopton were instructed that they must persuade their mistress to conform, they explained that they would not and could not. Rochester protested that “it was nowise suitable that a servant should act otherwise than in obedience to his mistress’s orders, and discharge of his domestic duties,” while Hopton declared that “he was the Lady Mary’s servant and obeyed her orders in her own house.”6
As in years before, Mary gave the emperor a powerful hold over English politics, with the threat of war hanging over the country.7 Sir William Paget was to be sent to the imperial court to “renew and make fast