Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [96]
Then came Mary herself, riding in an open litter pulled by six horses in white trappings almost to the ground. Official accounts describe her as “richly apparelled with mantle and kirtle of cloth of gold … all things thereunto appertaining, according to the precedents.”15 Mary was dressed as a queen consort. On her head she wore a gold tinsel cloth and a jeweled crown, which was described as being “so massy and ponderous that she was fain to bear up her head with her hands.”16 Around Mary’s litter rode four ladies on horseback: Edward Courtenay’s mother, the marchioness of Exeter; and the wives of the duke of Norfolk, the earl of Arundel, and Sir William Paulet. Next came the carriage carrying Elizabeth and Anne of Cleves; then lines of peereses, ladies, and gentlewomen, some in chariots, some on horseback, and the royal henchmen dressed in the Tudor colors of green and white.17
For a mile and a half, the grand procession wound its way through the graveled streets of London. The aldermen of the city stood within the rails; behind them the multitudes, “people resorted out of all parts of the realm, to see the same, that the like have not been seen before.”18 The procession was, Renard reported, “a memorable and solemn one, undisturbed by any noise or tumult.”19
From the Tower to Temple Bar, Mary was greeted by an array of civic pageantry. At Fenchurch Street, Genoese merchants had created a triumphal arch decorated with verses praising Mary’s accession: as she passed, a boy dressed as a girl and carried on a throne by men and “giants” delivered a salutation.20 At Cornhill, the Florentines paid tribute to Mary’s triumph over Northumberland’s forces by invoking an image of Judith, the Israelite heroine, saving her people from Holofernes, the Assyrian leader, and of Tomyris, who had led her people to victory against the all-conquering Cyrus. In the pageant, an angel clothed in green, trumpet in hand, was strung up at the highest point between four gigantic “pictures.” As the angel put the trumpet to his mouth, a trumpeter hidden within the pageant “did sound as if the noise had come from the angel, to the great marvelling of many ignorant persons.”21 In Cornhill and Cheap, the conduits ran with wine and pageants were performed in which people stood singing verses in praise of their queen.
At St. Paul’s, Mary was addressed by the recorder of London and the chamberlain before being presented with a purse containing a thousand marks of gold, a gesture of goodwill “which she most thankfully received.”22 At the school in St. Paul’s churchyard, the playwright John Heywood, sitting under a vine, delivered an oration in Latin and English; and at the dean of St. Paul’s Gate, choristers held burning tapers that gave off “most sweet perfumes.”23 At Ludgate, minstrels played and children sang songs of joy. Then, passing through Temple Bar by early evening, Mary finally reached Whitehall and took leave of the lord mayor. The following day she would be crowned queen of England.
CHAPTER 41
GOD SAVE QUEEN MARY
AT ELEVEN IN THE MORNING ON SUNDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1553, MARY proceeded to the south transept of Westminster Abbey for her coronation. It was a sight not seen before and combined elements of both precedent and novelty. The queen, dressed as a male monarch in traditional state robes of crimson velvet, walked beneath a canopy borne by the barons