On the 27th of May 1541, Margaret Pole -Countess of Salisbury (in her own right), devoted mother, friend of the late Queen Katherine of Aragon and governess to her daughter the Princess Mary- was executed.
She had been attainted in 1539 after she and several members of her family were accused of being involved in the “Exeter plot” and after her son Reginald spoke (first) against the King’s treatment of his wife Catherine and daughter Mary and later against his supremacy over the Church. Margaret was one of the last Plantagenet and one of the members with strongest Yorkist links. Her parents were George Duke of Clarence and Isabel Neville daughter of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick better known today as “The Kingmaker”. Both her father and brother had also been attainted and executed by Mary’s relatives, the first (her father) by Mary’s great-grandfather, Edward IV and her brother Edward, Earl of Warwick by her grandfather, Henry VII in 1499 after being implicated in a plot with the pretender Perkin Warbeck.
She always remained loyal to her former charge, the Lady Mary and her mother, Queen Katherine. Her death is one of the most tragic events in Henry VIII’s reign. Chapuys largely criticized this and retold the event in his letters.
Some historians believe that there was another dimension to this execution. That it was more than just religiously motivated. Sure, she was a fervent Catholic, but she was a survivor first and foremost. And despite the so called Exeter plot, there is little evidence that there really was a plot or that she was conspiring against Henry VIII. Margaret had never even been fully told of just what evidence had convicted her. But this didn’t matter. She was a religious enemy, and a dangerous threat because of her lineage and one of her sons who spoke against the King’s break from the church and his divorce from Queen Katherine.
White Rose of York.
“Margaret Pole was at one level just another casualty of the religious wars that dominated the sixteenth century, in which followers of the old faith –Roman Catholicism- and various splinter groups of the new faith –Protestantism- sought to smite one another into submission. These wars took different forms. Occasionally they were fought between kingdoms allied to opposing faiths, but far more often, the religious wars were civil and dynastic conflicts that ripped individual kingdoms asunder. This certainly was the case in England … Yet her death could also be seen as the undignified final act in a long spell of nonreligious aristocratic violence that had begun nearly a century earlier … This conflict, usually assumed to have been closed on the accession of Henry Tudor as Henry VIII and his defense of the crown at the battle of Stoke, in fact continued to haunt the sixteenth century politics long afterward. Certainly it played a role in Margaret Pole’s death…” –Jones
Reginald Pole spoke fervently against Henry VIII, this angered him and made him more paranoid. If the Catholic powers could unite against him, they could look to others to take his place as King of England. These people only needed to find someone who were descendants of Edward III, who had the right credentials and it was done. For us this may have sound far-fetched but it was not so far-fetched back then when there were many nobles who had as much royal blood as Henry, and who some considered were better suited for the job based on that lineage. Margaret and her sons being descendants of Edward III, were the first ones on Henry’s list following the aftermath of the Pilgrimage of Grace and France and Spain forming an alliance two years later. Margaret was the last one from the members in her family imprisoned –with the exception of her younger son Geoffrey Pole, who, to save his skin, signed a confession saying so and so was guilty- to be executed.
“At first, when the sentence of death was made known to her, she found the thing very strange, not knowing of what crime she was accused, nor how she had been sentenced; but at last, perceiving that there was no remedy, and that die she must … walked towards the midst of the space in front of the Tower, where there was no scaffold erected nor anything except a small block. Arrived there, after commending her soul to her Creator, she asked those present to pray for the King, the Queen, the Prince and the princess, to all of whom she wished to be particularly commended, and more especially to the latter, whose godmother she had been. She sent her blessing to her, and begged also for hers … May God in his high Grace pardon her soul.” -Eustace Chapuys, Imperial Ambassador at Henry VIII’s Court
Her execution was gruesome. The usual executioner was nowhere to be seen because he was in the North, distributing justice there and in his place was a young man who had no idea what he was doing.
“When the signal was given to strike” writes Dan Jones in his book ‘The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors’ “he brought the weapon down toward the block. But he botched the job.” Rather than killing her in one stroke, it took him more than one to finish the job. She was literally hacked to pieces, with several blows landing on her head and shoulders.
It was a sad end for the woman who had survived through so much. When she had been moved to the Tower, she expected to be treated according to her station and very few took pity on her. In fact another maligned person, another Queen named Katherine, took it upon herself to send the poor old woman clothes and new shoes so she could be appropriately dressed. Katherine Howard, against popular opinion today, was engaged in doing the usual things that Queen Consorts did and that meant doing charitable work and interceding on prisoners’ behalf to her husband, to ask him for mercy. No doubt, this was the thing that motivated Henry to pay from his own purse for her new garments. Unfortunately it didn’t save her from this gruesome fate. So once again, the white rose of York was stained with blood.
Sources:
Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors by Dan Jones
Inside the Tudor Court of Henry VIII by Lauren Mackay
Six Wives and the Many Mistresses of Henry VIII by Amy Licence
The Birth of Margaret Pole nee Plantagenet, Countess of Salisbury.
Margaret Pole was born at Farleigh Hungerford Castle in Bath on the 14th of August in 1473. Her parents were the Duke and Duchess of Clarence, George Plantagenet and Isabel Neville. She was born at Farley Castle in Bath. She was the only one of their offspring to reach old age. Her brother was executed during Henry VII’s reign after being involved in a plot with Perkin Warbeck in 1499. Her mother died in childbirth and her father not long after, charged with treason and reputedly died in a malmsey of wine.
Margaret and the Spanish Infanta forged a strong friendship that hugely benefited the Poles when Katherine of Aragon became Queen of England. As a reward for her friendship, Margaret was awarded the Earldom of Salisbury, which turned her into a Countess in her own right. In 1538 however, she and several members of her family were implicated in the Exeter plot and three years later she was executed in one of the most gruesome executions in Tudor history. As Lady Mary Tudor’s governess, the Countess influenced her in more ways than one and the former Princess never forgot about her and neither did she. During her execution, Margaret’s last words were about the King, his son (Prince Edward) and of course, her former charge the Lady Mary.
*“It was during the spring of 1541, if not before, that Catherine found herself drawn to a handsome young man in the King’s privy chamber. That March, when Henry visited Dover and left her behind at Greenwich, she sought the company of her distant cousin Thomas Culpeper, reputed to be a very handsome man and still unmarried even though he was probably in his mid-to late twenties. She may initially have solicited his advice about the king, or whiled away the time in conversation and dancing, but the innocent friendship quickly developed into a dangerous romantic attachment. In her loneliness, the queen may have desired the flattering attentions of a male friend; perhaps the pair simply indulged in some harmless flirtation, or maybe she thought she could pursue her own personal pleasure as well as keeping the king satisfied. There is even a chance that Catherine hoped to fall pregnant by the young man, in the light of Henry’s disappointment at her failure to conceive. All these have been suggested as reasons for Catherine embarking on an illicit liaison that would eventually cost her her head. Yet history may have judged the young queen too harshly; no actual evidence survives to prove that she and Culpeper actually committed adultery and treason by sleeping together.”
Thoughts? Conor Byrne in his biography on Katherine Howard also gives a good argument on how she might not have been guilty. In her book “Ladies in Waiting”, Victoria Sylvia Evans points out that while she does believe she was guilty, unlike her cousin, she wasn’t afforded the benefit of the doubt. Her family’s enemies just wanted her out of the way. Period.
Whether or not she was guilty, there is no question that up until the accusations leveled against her, she was doing quite well in her position. She had a few bumps along the road, but she did fulfilled her role to the best of her ability. She pleaded for Margaret Pole, Thomas Wyatt and many others, lives in the same fashion as the first of Henry’s queens had done in the aftermath of the Evil May Day riots, and after she reconciled herself with her eldest stepdaughter, the two spend a lot of time together and she did a lot for her other stepchildren as well, mainly her cousin the lady Elizabeth.
*From “The Six Wives and the Many Mistresses of Henry VIII” by Amy Licence.
Margaret Pole was born at Farleigh Castle in Bath on the 14th of August in 1473. Her parents were George Plantagenet -the younger brother of Edward IV- and Isabel Neville -the eldest daughter of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, better known as the “Kingmaker”. As a daughter of York, Margaret Plantagenet was entitled to a life of privilege, however her mother’s sudden death in childbirth and her father’s arrest and execution (after he took the law by his own hands and punished two of his servants after he suspected they had been bribed by his brother’s wife’s family to poison his wife and went on a mad rampage) changed everything. Even before Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond became King; Margaret’s position was very delicate. Her custody, along with that of her brother, was given to Anthony Woodville. After Richard became King, he and her brother were placed under a new protective custody. Although Richard III was the youngest brother, Margaret and Edward, Earl of Warwick were barred from the line of succession since their father died as a traitor.
Nevertheless, Margaret enjoyed a comfortable living. Had Richard not died, it is safe to speculate that he might have married either one to one of his loyal subjects to neutralize possible threats? Perhaps to someone of lower rank whom he knew would not use their spouses’ positions to incite rebellion. With limited data, it is impossible to know for sure. Richard III is after all still a mystery. But Anne Neville being his wife, it is highly possible he showed more affection towards them than to his other nieces and nephews.
Margaret was the only one of her siblings to live to old age. During Henry VII’s reign she was married to Sir Richard Pole. The marriage was a happy one, and the couple had many children. Her brother was not so lucky. Being one of the Plantagenet males, Henry was fearful that he could be used against him as he was used against Richard III, so he placed him in the Tower of London. He remained there until his execution in 1499, after he was implicated in a pllot with the pretender Perkin Warbeck.
There is no record of what Margaret felt or if she was present for his execution. Probably not, but given all that she had been through, it is likely that she felt very bad about his death but could say very little for fear of upsetting the new regime. Oddly enough, his death was also the result of the King of Aragon’s insistence. His youngest daughter, Katherine, was betrothed to the Prince of Wales and Henry needed that marriage to secure his dynasty but Ferdinand felt that the Tudor dynasty would never be secure as long as one of the Yorkists lived.
Regardless of this, Margaret became a good friend of the Spanish Princess since her arrival until her death. As a reward for her friendship, she was awarded the Earldom of Salisbury, becoming Countess in her own right. In 1538 however she and several members of her family were implicated in the Exeter plot and three years she was executed in one of the most gruesome scenes in Tudor history. As Lady Mary Tudor’s governess, the Countess influenced her in more ways than one and the former Princess never forgot about her and neither did she. During her execution, Margaret’s last words were about the King, his son and of course, her former charge the Lady Mary.
Sources:
Blood Sisters by Sarah Gristwood
Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors by Dan Jones
"At seven o'clock in the morning on Friday 27 May 1541, within the precincts of the tower of London, an old woman walked out into the light of a spring day. Her name was Margaret Pole. By birth, blood and lineage she was one of the noblest women in England. Her father, George duke of Clarence, had been the brother to a king and her mother, Isabel Neville, had in her time been co-heir to one of the greatest earldoms in the land. Both parents were now long gone, memories from another age and another century …Like many inhabitants of the tower of London, Margaret Pole was a prisoner. Two years previously she had been stripped of her lands and titles by an act of parliament which accused her of having ‘committed and perpetrated diverse and sundry other detestable and abominable treason’ against her cousin, king Henry VIII …Her two principal crimes were her close relation to the king and her suspicion of his adoption of the new forms and doctrines of Christian belief that had swept through Europe during the past two decades … For this she had lived within London’s stout, supposedly impervious riverside fortress, which bristled with cannon from its whitewashed central tower, for the past eighteen months … In the tower Margaret was able to write letters to her relatives and was provided with servants and good, expensive good. Her nobility was not demeaned. Earlier in the year Queen Catherine (Howard) tailor had been appointed to make her a set of new clothes, and just a few weeks previously more garments had turned up, ordered and paid for directly by the king. Henry had also sent his cousin a nightgown lined with fur and another with Cypriot satin, petticoats, bonnets and hose, four pairs of shoes and a new pair of slippers … As she walked out into the cool morning air, Margaret Pole could therefore have reflected that, although she was due to be beheaded that morning, she would at least die wearing new shoes. Her execution had been arranged in a hurry. She had been informed only hours previously that the king had ordered her death: a shockingly short time for an old lady to prepare her spirit and body for the end … A thin crowd had gathered to bear witness. They stood by a pathetically small chopping block, erected so hastily that it was simply set on the ground and not, as was customary, raised up on a scaffold. She commended her soul to her creator and asked those present to pray for king Henry and queen Catherine, the king’s two year old son and the twenty five year old princess Mary, her god daughter. But as the old woman stood talking … a feeling of restlessness went around. She was told to hurry up and place her little neck on the little piece of wood. The tower’s axe had been entrusted to a deputy: a man of tender years and little experience. When the signal was given to strike, he brought the weapon down towards the block. But he botched the job. Rather than cutting cleanly through Margaret’s neck in one stroke, he slammed the axe’s blade into the old woman’s shoulders and head… According to a report that reached Eustace Chapuys, the exceptionally well informed Imperial ambassador to England, the countess ‘found the thing very strange’, since she had no idea ‘of what crime she was accused, nor how she had been sentenced’. Few, in truth, would ever quite understand what threat this feeble old lady could have posed to a king as powerful and self-important as Henry VIII.“
Source:
The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors by Dan Jones.
One of the reasons why I love fiction, is because it shows that there are no limits to human imagination. We are inventive creatures. It’s in our nature. With it, also comes a knack to cling on to false memories, or twisted versions of a past that never was.
Gone with the wind is one of the greatest movies of all time. I haven’t read the book, but those who have tell me that it is great too. The movie opens up after a long overture with the following legend:
“There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South… Here in this pretty world Gallantry took its last bow … Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and Slave … Look for it only in books for it is no more than a dream remembered. A Civilization gone with the wind.”
Romanticizing history is nothing new. It’s usually harmless but every once in a while there is an effort by novelists and pop historians to push a nostalgic (and authoritative) form of narrative, painting the past with a broad brush, in the name of revisionist history. And as its previously been established, revisionist history can be a good thing when done right. But this is not one of those cases.
As one author said of the past, it is an entirely different world. People felt just as strongly about their loved ones and politics as you or I, but they saw the world differently.
Currently, I am working on something regarding “Convivencia” for my blog and my co-author, Helen R. Davis’ blog. The article will deal with information taken from BOTH Christian and Islamic sources.
The truth is, that as the Tudors and their Renaissance peers strived to paint the medieval period as the high point of ignorance, so have many pop historians and novelists strived to portray this practice as the highpoint of Spain’s golden age, or proof of religious tolerance.
Here is the stone cold truth: There was NO such thing as tolerance. You want tolerance? Tolerance means you put up with something, not that you necessarily like or accept it. The so called religious tolerance that came with Convivencia was hypocritical at best. You agreed to tolerate the “people of the book” as long as they paid a special tax (Jizya or Jyzyah).
And this was only for “people of the book”, meaning those who followed the Abrahamic God. Pagans did not get this deal. They were heathens, hence their new overlords went ‘they got to go.’ ‘Convert or else.’
Secondly, religious minorities within Islamic kingdoms were not free from discrimination. Christian kingdoms would not tolerate religious minorities who did not abide by their rule, the same went for Islamic kingdoms or Taifa kingdoms in Spain. You either followed the rule or you face the consequences. Plain and simple.
And if you were one of these religious minorities, you better hopes to God that there was no famine or economic crisis because if there was, then your group would be the first one people would point fingers at.
Look to the Tudors for this as well. Elizabeth I practiced some minor form of tolerance, but it was largely due to her necessity to look for allies against her Catholic enemies. As a result, she and the Ottoman empire became good allies. But this alliance is not all it is often thought out to be. If it weren’t for the Sultan’s mother, Safiye Sultan, this alliance would not have lasted as long as it did.
Jerry Brotton outlines this perfectly in his book The Sultan and the Queen. So does John Guy in his biography of the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth: the Forgotten Years. The Queen expressed disappointment that the Sultan wasn’t willing to commit more to the war effort against Spain and other Catholic nations as she was. Whenever he expressed second thoughts, she’d go directly to his mother (whom many regarded as the true power behind the throne). The two women wrote to each other often, and exchanged many gifts.
While Elizabeth, Murad III and his mother Safiye, put up with one another to safeguard their interests, something similar occurred with her Catholic subjects. One half of them still saw her as illegitimate and would plot against her until the end of her reign, and the other were torn between siding with their church, or proving their loyalty to a Queen they considered a heretic.
Henry VIII liked the ideas expressed by Martin Luther, and other Protestant thinkers Anne Boleyn introduced him to, but once he got a taste of true power, to quote Sir Thomas More (the man who was once his mentor and whom he beheaded) “when the lion knows his strength, no man can control him.” He began to go not just after those who sided with Rome or did not sign the Oath of Supremacy which recognized him as Supreme Head of the Anglican Church, he also went after Protestants as well.
Mary I initially thought she could appease all sides, but after Wyatt’s rebellion, she began to go after Protestants and while remaining a Catholic, she wasn’t afraid to voice her complaints to fellow Catholics who refused to follow her orders.
There seemed to be a certain level of acceptance among converts or descendants of Conversos and Moriskos (Jewish and Moorish converts respectively, who had converted to Christianity) in England as there was in Spain. In her book Black Tudors, Miranda Kauffman, gives many examples of African merchants and artists who settled in England during the middle ages and the beginning of the Renaissance and thrived in these professions. One of them is John Blanke, the Tudors’ black trumpeter who appears in one of the rolls of Henry VII’s coronation.
But as with the struggles faced by religious minorities living under the convivencia system, these people had to constantly prove their loyalty by working harder than anyone else; and as religious tensions continued to grow, disaffected nobles and commoners began to envy their success.
Once more, I can see why romanticizing certain historical eras and its practices has become so attractive. It makes for entertaining story-teller, fairy-tale-like, but by the end of the day, they are nothing more than a distorted version of the past. It is how we want to remember the past, and for some, how they want the past to be remembered, as the “good old days”. The more we start to read on these eras, we find that the “good old days” weren’t that good.
26 May 1522: Charles arrived at Dover where he was greeted by Cardinal Wolsey and an entourage of 300. Henry VIII met him two days later “with much joy and gladness”. The visit of Charles was widely awaited since he came with the intention with getting a new ally against his upcoming wars with France. The union was finalized with the betrothal of him and his first cousin the Princess Mary Tudor. U…nfortunately the marriage would never come to be. Not only because she was too young and he “grew tired” as Wolsey from the Tudors said to Katherine of Aragon, for her to grow up but because the people in Castile did not like the idea of a foreign bride. They already considered Charles a foreigner! People had rebelled against him, they were angry he had many Austrian and Germans counseling him. If he was Spanish born and Spanish raised then perhaps they would not have been so averse to the idea.
As things between Lady Mary and her half-brother, King Edward VI got progressively worse, her imperial cousin, Charles V took action. He sent imperial ships that were disguised as merchant ships to England. The plan was to take her away from England and use her as a figurehead to intimidate Edward VI and his council. However, like every other escape plans, these failed.
“On the evening of Monday, 30 June 1550, three imperial warships arrived off the coast of Essex. Further out to sea, they were supported by four larger vessels. This little fleet, commanded by the Dutchman Cornelius Scepperus, had encountered a flat calm. The next day one of the ships made its way to Stansgate and a small boat, with two men in it, rowed ashore. They claimed to be grain merchants and took with them a sample of their corn, but when they got ashore they found things unnervingly quiet. There was no one to meet them and they were obliged to return to their ship without having spoken to any local people. They had, however, been observed, and by quizzical eyes. People living around about, especially in the small port of Maldon at the head of the Blackwater estuary, knew of the rumors and wondered about the true motives of these Flemings who had materialized overnight. They were not convinced that the grain vessel was alone or that it had become with innocent intent. Though there was a long history of problems with Scottish pirates plundering the imperial merchant fleet, which might explain the need for an adequately defended ship, something about this vessel seemed wrong.
The real purpose, they feared, was altogether more sinister. Nearby at Woodham Walter the Lady Mary had been in residence since early May. Her confrontation with the government was well known and the possibility of her attempting to flee England had been all the talk in this part of Essex for weeks. It was hard to keep anything secret in a large household, where people came and went and not everyone was trustworthy, even if they seemed devoted. Yet few people could have anticipated quite how the enterprise would finally be abandoned.
The saga of Mary’s abortive attempt to escape from England to what she hoped would be a secure haven in the Low Countries was well documented at the time. It has elements of almost surreal comedy: disguises, frantic attempts to keep something secret of which the authorities were well aware and the final, complete deflation of Mary’s refusal to seize the chance when offered. At its heart was a troubled woman under severe strain, who entertained the fantasy that creeps into the minds of many people who are stressed almost beyond their mental resources–that running away offers a simple solution to all their difficulties. It is less the act itself which matters, more its contemplation. Perhaps this explains the contradictory nature of Mary’s behaviour in the summer of 1550. A woman who had shown remarkable fortitude over so many years could not, for a time, cope with yet another assault. To call this weakness would be a harsh judgement of Mary, who could not forget the past … Charles V also thought long and hard about whether, in agreeing to Mary’s repeated requests that he should furnish her with a means of escape, he was doing the right thing. As always with the emperor, his doubts about the wisdom of the enterprise were partly inspired by an uneasiness about whether he would actually be doing his cousin a service and partly overshadowed by political considerations. Aside from the hazardous nature of getting her away by ship, once gone she became financially dependent on him and could not serve his purpose by acting as the rallying force of principled opposition in England. He was also preoccupied with his preparations for leaving Brussels, which he did at the end of May, to go and take up residence at Augsburg. Ill and unhappy, beset with costly wars and rebellious subjects, this weary man who was losing his grip on his vast empire must have found Mary’s troubles little more than a minor irritation. His instinct, and his instructions to Van der Delft, pointed towards calming Mary down and persuading her to temporise. Eventually, he reluctantly agreed to help her. The plan for Mary’s flight was put together over a two-month period between May and July 1550 and the princess was very much its moving force. She had convinced herself that not just her religion but her life was in danger. This was the answer she gave to Van der Delft, when he pointed out to her that, if the king died, her absence could deprive her of the crown and would probably ensure the triumph of religious change for good: ‘If my brother were to die, I should be far better out of the kingdom; because as soon as he were dead, before the people knew it, they would despatch me too; there is no doubt of that, because you know that there is nobody about the king’s person or in the government who is not inimical to me.’ The problem with following the emperor’s advice on temporising was that her own, grim experience told her quite the reverse: ‘I fear I may tarry too long,’ she said. ‘When they send me orders forbidding me the mass, I shall expect to suffer as I suffered once during my father’s lifetime; they will order me to withdraw thirty miles from any navigable river or sea-port, and will deprive me of my confidential servants, and, having reduced me to the utmost destitution, they will deal with me as they please. But I will rather suffer death than stain my conscience.’ Her suspicion of the council was profound. They were ‘wicked and wily in their actions and particularly malevolent towards me’ … Mary had given some thought to the details of her escape. Van der Delft acknowledged that the first plan developed was Mary’s idea and he believed it could be made to work. Or perhaps it would be truer to say that he hoped it would work, because it relieved him of involvement, and the thought that he might be compromised alarmed him. Like Mary, he had a regard for his own personal security and that of his family. His desire to be of service to the princess was tinged with growing anxiety, especially as he was ill and arrangements were already in hand for him to leave England himself. The essence of Mary’s scheme was that she should be as close to the sea as possible, to facilitate her escape by water … Royal lady as she was, Mary did not initially contemplate going alone. She wanted with her ‘four of her ladies whom she trusts more than the rest’ (interesting to note that she evidently had reservations about some of them) plus Rochester himself and two unnamed gentlemen, one of whom was ‘very rich but would willingly give up all that he possesses to follow my lady to a place of safety’. Apart from these people, Mary would take nothing with her ‘except her rings and jewels. The plate she uses belongs to the king,’ wrote the ambassador, ‘as, I suppose the tapestries and other furniture do.’
Van der Delft said that no one apart from himself, his secretary and Rochester knew of the princess’s plan. Whether that was true or not, it involved too many people to be practical. Then the possibility of a boat being procured in England evaporated. The month of May came and went with Mary still in Essex and still exhorting the ambassador and his master to help her leave. Matters stalled when the government introduced restrictions on all movements at night, so that ‘no roads or crossroads, no harbours or creeks, nor any passage or outlet’ escaped the vigilance of ‘good folk who had something to lose’. This was a reference to the possibility of further summer uprisings like those of the preceding year, but a secondary motive for the council may have been to restrict Mary and frustrate her possibility of flight. The plan that was finally put into action took shape after Charles V had left Brussels and was approved by him on 25 June. Its driving force may have been his sister, Mary of Hungary, the regent of the Low Countries, who was more inclined to make decisions and take action. She also wanted to ensure that any repercussions were minimised, particularly in the event of failure. This meant waiting until Van der Delft had left, so he could not be implicated, and it also required that his successor, Jehan Scheyfve, a man of whom the regent did not think much, was kept completely in the dark. Thus it fell to Jehan Dubois, secretary to the imperial embassy in London, to take on the burden of managing the revised escape plan. He was more than equal to the task; in fact, he carried out his part of it in exemplary fashion. But it did not succeed. The emperor foresaw difficulties when he gave his sister his guarded approbation. All concerned should be aware of the need for flexibility and not try ‘to reckon the thing too exactly from day to day, as if the sea were a fixed and invariable factor, permitting such undertakings as may be carried out on land’. He thought that there was inevitably some danger and that speed was vital, or the details might leak out. ‘As for disguising our cousin,’ he wrote, ‘I will leave that to those in charge … but no disguise need be used as to whether or not I knew of the undertaking, and it will be better to be quite open about it … for we have the best of reasons and have done all we could to protect our cousin’s person and conscience … and holding back as long as possible from this extreme measure, which it has now become imperative to resort to because of the attitude adopted in England.’ Charles was evidently not given to cloak-and-daggery and he was determined to put the blame on Edward’s councillors. He was more concerned that the pursuit of Scottish pirates, the pretext for his ships being in English waters, could lead to difficulties if the ambassadors expected from Scotland at any time arrived in Brussels before the ships set sail.
In the event, none of the difficulties foreseen by Charles V happened. The reason Mary did not leave was straightforward. She had changed her mind. Or, put another way, when faced, at last, with the opportunity to go, she could not bring herself to do it.“
As before, Mary was faced with a difficult choice. She could have left and enjoy moments of bliss. But these would pass in time. She probably remembered the lessons in history. Although she had the fighting spirit of her Trastamara grandparents and Tudor grandfather, she knew that it would be a huge gamble to run away and then attempt to take the throne. Not to mention, the people who still believed in her. Many of them would still support her, but returning back wouldn’t be easy. Everything her enemies had accused her of, would start to ring true, and she could end up the same way as La Beltraneja, de la Pole and other pretenders who fled to foreign countries for protection and when they tried to come back to claim what they viewed was rightfully theirs, they failed. And then there was also the more personal aspect of this: her mother had refused the easy way out, clinging on to her title of queen and asking Mary to obey her father but also to persevere.
This was one of her most harrowing trials where the end lesson was: she was on her own and could trust no one but herself and rely on her unwavering faith to see her the coming struggles.
Source quoted: The Myth of Bloody Mary by Linda Porter. For more information on this failed escape, I also recommend H.F.M. Prescott’s biography on Mary, The Spanish Tudor. She doesn’t have a favorable opinion on Mary but the biography is repleted with plenty of details and and this is one subject that she expands upon.
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest Queen of them all?
“Elizabeth was
25-years-old and in her youthful prime at the time of her accession. While
never a beauty, she was attractive enough and the historian John Hayward
(c.1564-1627) described her as being “of
stature mean, slender, straight and amiably composed; of such state in her
carriage, as every motion of her seemed to bear majesty” She had fair hair “inclined to pale yellow”, with “lively
and sweet” eyes and a nose that rose slightly in the middle.
Portraits suggest that Elizabeth resembled her mother facially, although she
had her father’s colouring. During her brother’s reign, she had sought to
present herself as a modest Protestant maiden, refusing to wear the rich
clothes and jewels that had been left to her by her father. Throughout this
time, she was held up as a model to other young women, making them “ashamed to
be dressed and painted like peacocks” as John Aylmer (1521-1594), Bishop and
tutor to Lade Jane Grey, put it. Even the sober Lady Jane Grey herself declared
that, in matters of dress, she wished to follow “my Lady Elizabeth which
followeth God’s word”. Elizabeth began to dress more flamboyantly during her
sister’s reign and it is clear that somber black was not her real preference.
As queen, Elizabeth loved fine clothes and was proud of her appearance, growing
concerned as she began to notice herself ageing. From her 40s and 50s she wore
wigs to cover her grey hair and thick layers of makeup to give the illusion of
eternal youth.
Her clothes also grew increasingly elaborate with large ruffs and huge padded
sleeves; she owned around 3,000 costly gowns, many of which were strewn with
jewels. She continued to attract suitors into her old age, with young men, such
as Walter Raleigh (c.1552-1618) and the Earl of Essex, encouraging her in the
belief that time had stood still for her.
The personal possessions with which she decorated her palaces were equally
splendid. She carried golden clocks around with her from residence to
residence, as well as books covered in silver gilt and a bed pane embroidered
with silver fabric. An inventory of her possessions with which she decorated
her palaces were equally splendid. She carried golden clocks around with her
from residence to residence, as well as books covered in silver gilt and a bed
pane embroidered with silver fabric. An inventory of her possessions noted that
she also owned more exotic items, including a “staff of unicorn’s horn with a
cross garnished with silver gilt”. It was topped with a crystal ball.”
-
TUDOR TREASURY by Elizabeth Norton.
So … if there was a match-up of which Disney villain best
matched Good Queen Bess, it’s a no brainer that it’d be the Evil Queen from
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. She’s way more brutal in the original fairy
tale, though she’s still scary in Disney’s film. Just like Gloriana, no one is
allowed to steal her glory. The older Elizabeth I got, she became more vain.
With a brand to protect and the symbol she’d become to her people, absolutely
nothing could stand in her way. This meant that no one in her court, much less
the ladies that were part of her household, could outshine her. There was an
incident where some did and Bess took it as a serious offence. On one of these
occasions, she broke a woman’s finger. Additionally, of all the potential claimants to the throne, the ones she was most afraid were her female cousins. Pop history is focused on the conflict between Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth. However, from the moment she became England’s new Queen, Elizabeth I her eyes were locked on ALL of her female relatives. Everyone that she viewed as a threat, she used every excuse to disinherit them. With Catherine Grey, because the priest and witness had died at the time her union with Edward Seymour, Eartl of Hertford, her marriage was declared invalid which made her sons (both of which she had while she was imprisoned in the Tower) bastards. She died under house arrest shortly after. As for the youngest of the Grey sisters, Mary Grey, she was first ridiculed by the Spanish ambassador for her stature and apparent hunchback and then the Queen when she found out that she had married without royal permission. Elizabeth I ordered husband and wife be set apart so Mary Grey never enjoyed any marital bliss. Furthermore, Elizabeth I did not like that Mary Grey sided with the more Evangelical Protestants of her court.
In Elizabeth I’s England, there was only room for one woman and that was Elizabeth. During the last decades of her reign, when it became apparent that no manner of heckling and threats could change the course of nature, she became desperate to fool the viewer, including herself, by presenting an image of a nearly perfect, flawless monarch who was the closest thing to the living embodiment of a goddess as her people were ever going to get. It is also around this period that artists and playwrights aided in the promotion of the cult of the Virgin Queen which indirectly sought to replace that of the once popular Virgin Mary, Queen Mother of Heaven.
The best way to describe and (in the case of subjects) to deal with royalty was as one character tells
his charge, Rodrigo “Ruy” Dias de Vivar in the Amazon Spanish series EL CID,
is to remember that you may share in their joys and comfort them (when needed)
but NEVER think that you can be their equal. The Tudors more than any other
English dynasty preceding them, always made sure their subjects remembered
that. They wove an alternative tale which became embedded in the popular image. Elizabeth I most of all, became a symbol for the masses to admire and fear, one that loved to remind her noble subjects that they could expect favors and good will if they ignored the passage of time and played the game of courtly love with the aging Queen.
