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and must obey the law,” Wotton countered. “A gentle law I tell you!” snorted the emperor. Wotton then asked if Sir Thomas Chamberlain, English ambassador to Mary of Hungary, might be permitted to have the service of the Book of Common Prayer in his house, at which Charles exploded, “English service in Flanders! Speak not of it. I will suffer none to use any doctrine or service in Flanders that is not allowed of the Church.” He ended the audience by saying that if Mary were not allowed her Mass, he would provide her with a remedy. And as Charles made clear: “We would rather she had died ten years ago than see her waver now; but we believe her to be so constant that she would prefer a thousand deaths rather than renounce her faith. If death were to undertake her for this cause, she would be the first martyr of royal blood to die for our holy faith, and for this earn glory in the better life.”14 The emperor had raised the prospect that Mary might be sacrificed as a Catholic martyr.

CHAPTER 33

MATTERS TOUCHING MY SOUL

ON SUNDAY, AUGUST 9, 1551, TWENTY-FOUR LORDS OF THE PRIVY Council met at Richmond, as Edward noted in his journal, to “commune of my sister Mary’s matter.” It was agreed that “it was not mete to be suffered any longer.” In July a new Anglo-French alliance had been concluded, with Edward betrothed to Henry II’s daughter Elizabeth. Dudley now felt confident to confront the issue of Mary’s disobedience.1 Mary’s senior household officers, Robert Rochester, Francis Englefield, and Edward Waldegrave, were all summoned before the Council at Hampton Court to receive instructions ordering the princess to conform.2 Upon their return to Mary’s residence, Copped Hall, near Epping in Essex, on Saturday the fifteenth, Mary forbade them to speak with her chaplains or her household and required them to return to London with a personal letter to the king:

I have by my servants received your most honourable letter, the contents whereof do not a little trouble me, and so much the more for that any of my said servants should move or attempt me in matters touching my soul…. Having for my part utterly refused heretofore to talk with them in such matters, trusted that your Majesty would have suffered me, your poor humble sister … to have used the accustomed Mass, which the King your father and mine, with all his predecessors did evermore use; wherein also I have been brought up from my youth, and thereunto my conscience doth not only bind me, which by no means will suffer me to think one thing and do another, but also the promise made to the Emperor, by your Majesty’s Council, was an assurance to me that in so doing I should not offend the laws, although they seem now to qualify and deny the thing.

Mary maintained that although the letter was signed by Edward’s hand, it was “nevertheless in my opinion not your Majesty’s in effect,” and she restated her belief that “it is not possible that your Highness can at these years be a judge in matters of religion.” She petitioned him “to bear with me as you have done, and not to think that by my doings or example any inconvenience might grow to your Majesty or your realm … rather than to offend God and my conscience, I offer my body at your will, and death shall be more welcome than life with a troubled conscience.”3 When the household officers arrived back in London, they were each commanded separately to return to Mary and do what had been asked of them. They all refused, Rochester and Waldegrave saying that they would rather endure any punishment and Sir Francis Englefield declaring that he could find it “neither in his heart nor his conscience to do it.”4

ON AUGUST 28, the lord chancellor, Lord Rich; Sir Anthony Wingfield, comptroller of the king’s household; and Sir William Petre were sent to Mary at Copped Hall with instructions from the king:

His Majesty did resolutely determine it just, necessary and expedient that her Grace should not any ways use or maintain the private mass or any other manner of service than such as by the law of the realm is authorised or allowed.5