Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [89]
All along the procession route the streets had been swept clean and spread with gravel so that the horses would not slip; the buildings had been decorated with rich tapestries, and spectators crowded onto roofs, walls, and steeples. As the procession moved through Aldgate, trumpets sounded from the gate’s battlements. Lining the streets through Leadenhall to the Tower were the guilds of London, all wearing their livery hoods and furs, all paying homage to their new queen. Wherever the queen passed, placards declared, “Vox populi, vox Dei”—“The voice of the people is the voice of God.”6 The streets thronged “so full of people shouting and crying ‘Jesus save her grace,’ with weeping tears for joy, that the like was never seen before,” reported the chronicler Charles Wriothesley.7 The imperial ambassadors agreed: The “joy of the people” was “hardly credible,” “the public demonstrations” having “never had their equal in the kingdom.”8
With cannons sounding from every battlement “like great thunder, so that it had been like to an earthquake,” Mary arrived at the Tower. There the lord mayor took his leave and Mary was met by Sir John Gage and Sir John Brydges, constable and lieutenant of the Tower, respectively, standing in front of rows of archers and arquebusiers. Kneeling on the green before the Chapel Royal of St. Peter ad Vincula within the Tower precinct were Edward Courtenay, who had been prisoner since the age of nine and whose father, the marquess of Exeter, had been beheaded in 1538; the aged Thomas Howard, duke of Norfolk, still under sentence of death since the last months of Henry VIII’s reign; and the deprived bishops of Winchester and Durham, Stephen Gardiner and Cuthbert Tunstall. In the name of all the prisoners, Bishop Gardiner congratulated Mary on her accession. “Ye are my prisoners!” exclaimed the queen. Raising them up one by one, she kissed them and granted them their liberty. Courtenay and Norfolk were restored to their rank and estates, the deprived bishops to their sees. Then, as her standard was raised above the keep, Mary entered the Tower.9 “The people … are full of hope,” wrote the imperial ambassadors, “that her reign will be a godly, righteous and just one, and help to establish her firmly on the throne.”10
NOW IN POSSESSION of her kingdom, Mary could begin the task of governing. She had won the throne at Framlingham with a small council of her household officers, including Robert Rochester, Edward Waldegrave, and Henry Jerningham, together with figures such as the earls of Sussex and Bath, who had arrived in the early days of the coup. All were of proven loyalty, but few had political experience. Then, as Mary journeyed to London, she had been besieged with apologies and pledges of fidelity from the Edwardian councillors who had been so closely involved with Edward’s Protestant reforms and who had, just days before, conferred the crown on Lady Jane Grey. Some had displayed reluctance in agreeing to Northumberland’s plan, but all had eventually signed Edward’s “Device for the Succession.” Though Mary doubted their loyalty and their motives, most upon their submission were restored to royal favor.
To her existing council of household servants, Mary appointed experienced men such as Sir William Petre, Lord William Paget, the earls of Arundel and Pembroke, Sir John Mason, and Sir Richard Southwell. The earl of Arundel became lord steward; William Paulet, the marquess of Winchester, retained his office of high treasurer. By the time Mary reached the Tower, she had a Privy Council, a hybrid of trust and experience, of some twenty-five members.
Mary also appointed to her Privy Council men who had suffered for their views and faith under