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at a distance.7 Four swords were held before her as she ate, and according to custom she “rested her feet on two of her ladies.”8 The earl of Derby, high steward of England, and the duke of Norfolk, high marshal, rode around the hall on chargers trapped with cloth of gold, overseeing the banquet and maintaining order. After the second course, the banquet was interrupted by a horseman, the queen’s champion, Sir Edward Dymocke, who entered dressed in bright armor, ostrich plumes in his helmet, with a surcoat of armorial bearings. He read out a challenge: “Whosoever shall dare to affirm that this Lady is not the rightful Queen of this Kingdom I will show him the contrary, or will do him to death” and threw down his glove.

Returning to the queen, he proclaimed that seeing that “none was found who dared to gainsay him or take up his glove, he hailed her as the true and rightful Queen.”9

CHAPTER 42

INIQUITOUS LAWS

FOUR DAYS AFTER HER CORONATION, MARY OPENED HER FIRST Parliament. As she looked on from her throne, Bishop Gardiner, the lord chancellor, made his opening address in which he “treated amply of the union with religion,” demonstrating how many disadvantages had befallen the realm owing to its separation. “Parliament,” he declared, “was assembled by her Majesty and the Council to repeal many iniquitous laws against the said union, and to enact others in favour of it.”1

In one of its first acts, Parliament declared that the marriage of Mary’s parents, Katherine of Aragon and Henry VIII, had been valid and that Mary was therefore legitimate. The queen’s title was vindicated from “the corrupt and unlawful sentence” that had divorced her father and mother and from subsequent laws that had declared her illegitimate. It was what Mary had fought for since the years of her adolescence. Finally she had restored her mother’s memory and confirmed her own legitimacy.

Next came the repeals of the Edwardian religious legislation that had pronounced on the Prayer Book, the sacraments, and married priests, thereby restoring the Church settlement to that of the final years of her father’s reign. All offenses defined as treasonable during Henry and Edward’s reigns were repealed, and the law was taken back to its basic definition of 1352, with evidence of guilt now lying once more in action against the monarch rather than in a denial of the royal supremacy.

To make the bills acceptable to the House of Commons, all allusion to the pope had to be avoided. Holders of monastic and chantry lands, whatever their doctrinal beliefs, feared that a return to Rome would threaten the property that they had received following the dissolution of the monasteries during the 1530s. Writing to Pole, Mary explained that the Commons would not hear of “the abolishing, specially of the law that gave the title of the supremacy of the Church in the realm of the crown, suspecting that to be an introduction of the Pope’s authority into the realm, which they cannot gladly hear of.”2

Although the bill was eventually passed, it demonstrated that though Parliament was willing to restore church services and religious ceremonies to the pattern of the 1540s, it was not prepared to sanction the abolition of the Supreme Headship and the return of papal authority in the realm. The Commons would not sacrifice their property and revenue from ex-monastic lands; these would need to be safeguarded before a return to Rome could be achieved.3 “There is difficulty about religion, the Pope’s authority and the restitution of Church property,” Renard explained, “so much so that a conspiracy has been discovered among those who hold that property either by the liberality of the late Kings Henry and Edward, or by purchase, who would rather get themselves massacred than let go.” Renard’s message to the emperor was clear: “The majority of Parliament refuses to admit the Pope’s authority or to come back into the fold.”4

Mary was forced to curb her zeal; for now she would remain supreme head of the Church. As she wrote to Pole on November 15:

This Parliament was to make a full