Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [83]
AS LADY JANE GREY WAS PROCLAIMED QUEEN, “NO ONE SHOWED any sign of rejoicing, and no one cried ‘Long live the Queen’ except the herald who made the proclamation and a few archers who followed him.”2 As the Genoese merchant Baptista Spinola continued, “for the hearts of the people are with Mary, the Spanish Queen’s daughter.”3 One young man, Gilbert Potter, who had shouted out that Lady Mary was the rightful queen, was arrested and sent to Cheapside, where his ears were nailed to the pillory and then cut off.4
All hope of Mary’s accession looked to have been lost. The Armory, Treasury, and Great Seal were all under the control of the duke of Northumberland, and with Lady Jane in possession of the Tower, the capital seemed to be secure. Warships had been dispatched to the Thames, and “troops were stationed everywhere to prevent the people from rising in arms or causing any disorder.”5 Mary had neither soldiers nor sufficient funds; she was an isolated figure in East Anglia, surrounded only by her household servants. The ambassadors sent by the emperor were pessimistic about her safety. Believing Northumberland had secured French support, they feared nothing could be done to prevent Jane’s accession and considered Mary’s chances “well-nigh impossible.”6
But Mary was determined to proclaim herself queen, a resolution the ambassadors believed was fraught with danger. “All the forces of the country are in the Duke’s hands, and my Lady has no hope of raising enough men to face him, nor means of assisting those who may espouse her cause.”7 They sent agents to advise her not to issue a proclamation but to wait to see if any support was forthcoming.8 Now only the English people could put Mary on the throne.
ON JULY 9, MARY wrote to Jane’s Council from Kenninghall, demanding that it renounce Jane and recognize her as queen, as her father’s will had decreed:
You know, the realm and the whole world knoweth; the rolls and records appear by the authority of the King our said father, and the King our said brother, and the subjects of this realm; so that we verily trust that there is no good true subject, that is, can, or would, pretend to be ignorant thereof.
Mary made it clear that she knew of the plot against her:
We are not ignorant of your consultations, to undo the provisions made for our preferment, nor of the great bands, and provisions forcible, wherewith ye be assembled and prepared—by whom, and to what end, God and you know, and nature cannot but fear some evil.
She called upon them to display their loyalty to her “just and right cause” and declared that she was ready to pardon them in the hope of avoiding bloodshed and civil war.9
After presenting the dispatch to the Privy Council, Mary’s messenger, Thomas Hungate, was sent to the Tower. The Council replied in a letter of the same day, addressed to “my Lady Mary” and criticizing “your supposed title which you judge yourself to have.” They asserted that Jane was queen of England by the authority of letters patent executed by the late king and endorsed by the nobility of the realm. They reminded her that by an act of Parliament she was illegitimate and unable to inherit and urged her to submit with assurances that “if you will for respect be quiet and obedient as you ought, you shall find us all and several [ready] to do any service that we, with duty, may be glad with you to preserve the common state of this Realm.”10 Meanwhile, circulars hurriedly drafted by Northumberland were sent to justices of the peace, ordering them to “assist us in our rightful possession of this kingdom and to extirp, to disturb, repel and resist the fained and untrue claim of the Lady Mary bastard.”11
The duke of Suffolk, Jane’s father, was nominated to lead an army of reinforcements