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the previous regime, including those she had freed from the Tower. Stephen Gardiner was appointed to the Privy Council the day after his release and three weeks later became lord chancellor. Though he had been principal adviser to Henry VIII in the king’s divorce from Katherine of Aragon, he had become increasingly conservative in his religious views during Edward’s reign and had developed a hatred for Northumberland after being imprisoned in 1551. As far as Mary was concerned this sufficiently redeemed him, though he would never come to enjoy the queen’s full confidence. Yet Mary’s political pragmatism was resented by many of the councillors. “Discontent is rife,” the imperial ambassadors reported on August 16, “especially among those who stood by the queen in the days of her adversity and trouble, who feel they have not been rewarded as they deserve, for the conspirators have been raised in authority.”11 Although their commitment to Mary varied, they all shared a fundamental loyalty to the Tudor regime.

In all, Mary’s Privy Council numbered some forty councillors. While it was among these men that a core group formed to govern and administer the realm, it was as much in the halls and corridors of the royal household, in whispered conversations and secret meetings with the queen, that decisions were made and policies formed. Unlike the Privy Council, the upper echelons of the royal household were an exclusive preserve of trusted Catholic loyalists whom Mary relied upon. Members of Mary’s “princely affinity of proven loyalty” replaced all those who had acted against her in the succession crisis. Sir Henry Jerningham, who had been in Mary’s service since 1533, became vice chamberlain and captain of the Guard; the long-serving Robert Rochester became comptroller of the household; Edward Waldegrave, master of the great wardrobe; and Sir Edward Hastings, master of the horse. John de Vere, the earl of Oxford, whose defection to Mary in the succession crisis had proved decisive, recovered the “hereditary” position of lord great chamberlain from the marquess of Northampton.

THE ACCESSION OF a queen regnant necessitated changes in the monarch’s private apartments. The male servants of Edward’s entourage were replaced by female attendants, many of them long-serving servants from her princely household, such as Jane Dormer, Mary Finch, Frances Waldegrave, Frances Jerningham, and Susan Clarencius, who became chief lady of the Privy Chamber. Their positions close to the queen gave these women a measure of influence, especially in the early months of the reign, a fact that was of concern to the emperor. “If you have an opportunity of speaking to her without her taking it in bad part,” he instructed Renard, “you might give her to understand that people are said to murmur because some of her ladies take advantage of their position to obtain certain concessions for their own private interest and profit.”12

But it was Simon Renard, building on Mary’s familial ties and attachment to the emperor, who would enjoy an unprecedented role as secret counselor and confidant. From the start, Mary had expressed her uncertainty as to how to “make herself safe and arrange her affairs,” and, as the ambassadors reported, “still less did she dare to speak of them to anyone except ourselves. She could not trust her Council too much, well knowing the particular character of its members.”13 Just a few hours after the imperial ambassadors’ first public audience, on July 29, and within days of her accession, the queen sent all three ambassadors word that one or two of their number might go to her privately in her oratory, “entering [by] the back door to avoid suspicion.”14 The task was delegated to Renard, who from then on acted as a secret counselor, advising and admonishing Mary as to decisions to be made and actions taken. He quickly won the queen’s trust and confidence and was frequently consulted by her in secret, when none of her English advisers was present. On religion Renard told her:

not to hurry … not to make innovations nor adopt unpopular