Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [72]
CHAPTER 30
WHAT SAY YOU, MR AMBASSADOR?
They are wicked and wily in their actions, and particularly malevolent towards me, I must not wait till the blow falls.1
—MARY TO VAN DER DELFT, MAY 2, 1550
AT THE END OF APRIL 1550, MARY SUMMONED VAN DER DELFT TO her residence at Woodham Walter Manor, near Maldon in Essex. She was in despair and had resolved to leave the country. “If my brother were to die,” she told the ambassador, “I would be far better out of the kingdom, because as soon as he were dead, before the people knew it, they would despatch me too.” She feared what was to come:
When they send me orders forbidding me the mass, I shall expect to suffer as I suffered once during my father’s lifetime; they will order me to withdraw thirty miles from any navigable river or sea-port, and will deprive me of my confidential servants, and having reduced me to the utmost destitution, they will deal with me as they please. But I will rather suffer death than stain my conscience…. I am like a little ignorant girl, and I care neither for my goods nor for the world, but only for God’s service and my conscience. I know not what to say; but if there is peril in going and peril in staying, I must choose the lesser of two evils…. I would willingly stay were I able to live and serve God as I have done in the past; which is what I have always said. But these men are so changeable that I know not what to say. What say you, Mr Ambassador?2
Mary, then thirty-four, had been contemplating escape for some time. In September the previous year, before Somerset’s fall, she had sent the emperor a ring and a message that she wished to flee England and seek refuge with him.3 Charles had responded cautiously, declaring it a matter in which Mary “should not be encouraged” because of the difficulties of getting her out of the realm and the cost of supporting her at the imperial court.4 Now, faced with her continued persecution and her ever-shriller protests, Charles cautiously agreed to support her in her wish, “for we have the best of reasons and have done all we could do to protect our cousin’s person and conscience.” He had held back as long as possible from “this extreme measure” but agreed it had “now become imperative to resort to because of the attitude adopted in England.”5
It was arranged that Mary’s escape should coincide with a change of imperial ambassador in mid-May. Van der Delft had been in England for six years, and his recall would not cause suspicion. Once he had formally taken leave, his ship would be diverted to waters off the Essex coast for long enough to meet a boat bringing Mary from Maldon. But with the plan set, fear of renewed popular unrest led to extra watches being placed on the roads near Woodham Walter. There was no chance of her passing unrecognized; another scheme had to be devised.6
On the evening of Monday, June 30, 1550, three imperial warships arrived off the coast near Maldon under the command of a Dutchman, Cornelius Scepperus, admiral of the imperial fleet. The next day, Jehan Dubois, secretary to the imperial embassy in London, rowed ashore disguised as a grain merchant. The plan, devised over the previous months, would see Mary escape under cover of darkness from Woodham Walter to the sea two miles away. She would then be rowed out to the waiting ships and taken to the Low Countries and the court of Charles’s sister, the regent Mary of Hungary.
In the early hours of July 2, Dubois arrived in Maldon, but there was no one to meet him. He sent an urgent, detailed dispatch to Robert Rochester, one of Mary’s senior household officers:
Sir … I arrived here this morning in a six-oared boat. Yesterday I sent my brother, Peter Marchant, to announce in this town that