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A Woman in a Man's World:Mary I and political intimacy,1553–1558Anna WhitelockPublished online: 14 Jun 2007.
To cite this article: Anna Whitelock (2007) A Woman in a Man's World: Mary Iand political intimacy, 1553–1558, Women's History Review, 16:3, 323-334, DOI:10.1080/09612020601022105
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Women’s History Review
Vol. 16, No. 3, July 2007, pp. 323–334
ISSN 0961–2025 (print)/ISSN 1747–583X (online)/07/030323–12 © 2007 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/09612020601022105
A Woman in a Man’s World: Mary I and political intimacy,1553–1558
Anna Whitelock
Taylor and FrancisRWHR_A_202105.sgm10.1080/09612020601022105Women’s History Review0961-2025 (print)/1747-583X (online)Original Article2007Taylor & Francis163000000July [email protected]
Mary I (1553–58) was England’s first crowned queen regnant. This article examines how
Mary exercised her power, drawing male figures into a sphere of political intimacy that
defied the established rules of the political game and circumvented the central instrument
of royal governance: the Privy Council. As such, the nature of Mary’s queenship is itself re-
examined, allowing her emergence as an independent, resolute and determined leader.
… the last daie of September 1553, the quene came thoroughe London towardes hircoronation, sytting in a charret of tyssue, drawne with vj. horses, all betrapped withredd velvet… Before hir rydd a nomber of gentlemen and knightes, and then dyversejudges, then diverse doctours of dyvynity; then followed certeyn bushopes; aftertheym came certayn lordes; then followed most parte of her counsaille; after whomfollowed xiij. knights of the bathe… Then followed the lorde of Winchester, beinglorde chauncellor, the merques of Winchester, lorde highe treasurer, having the sealeand mace before them; next came the duke of Norfolk, and after him the erle ofOxforde, who bare the sword before hir; sir Edwarde Hastinges led her horse in hishande. After the quenes chariot… cam theyre sondry gentyllwomen rydyng on horsestraped with redd velvet… then followed ij. other charyots covered with redd sattyn…and certayne gentellwomen betwen every of the saide charyots rydyng in chrymesynsatteyn, ther horses betraped with the same. The nomber of the gentillwomen thatrydd were xlvj. in noumber, besides theym that wer in the charyots.
1
And so Mary I travelled from the Tower of London to the Palace of Westminster on the
eve of her coronation. The procession was part of a triumphant ceremony acknowledg-
ing Mary as queen, and established protocol was the order of the day. Yet amidst such
convention and the following of ‘ancient custom’ things had had to change.
2
Mary was
the first queen regnant in English history to be crowned. She had secured her accession
Anna Whitelock completed a Ph.D. at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge entitled ‘In Opposition and in Govern-
ment: the households and affinities of Mary Tudor, 1516-1558’. She is currently revising her thesis for publication
and writing a biography of Mary Tudor (Bloomsbury/Random House, forthcoming 2008). Correspondence to:
Anna Whitelock, Flat A, 6 Bentinck Terrace, Cambridge, CB2 1HQ, UK. Email: [email protected]
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A. Whitelock
by taking up arms against the ruling establishment. And, for much of the previous five
years, she had lived as a religious pariah, staunchly Catholic in an increasingly
Protestant England.
The accession of Queen Mary I initiated a new episode in the history of the sixteenth-
century royal household, particularly in the Privy Chamber, the most private of the
monarch’s apartments.
3
Hitherto filled with male servants attending the monarch as he
washed, dressed and toileted, Mary’s gender ensured that women replaced men in these
positions of bodily intimacy. The procession on the eve of the coronation represented
the first outing of the newly fashioned court. Gentlemen who had previously
accompanied the monarch in large numbers as the personnel of the Privy Chamber
were now replaced by a ‘flock of peeresses, gentlewomen and ladies in waiting, never
before seen in such numbers’.
4
Yet the significance of Mary’s accession for the development of the Privy Chamber
went beyond mere changes in gender; it had implications for politics and governance.
Whilst Henry VII had established the Privy Chamber as a means of dividing the public
and private persons of the king and enforcing rules of entrée, Henry VIII transformed
the Privy Chamber into an arena within which both the ceremonial and personal
aspects of kingship were played out.
5
And, whilst his father had appointed a small
group of low-born staff to serve as body servants, Henry VIII filled the Privy Chamber
with high-born favourites with whom he had pre-existing ties of friendship, trust and
favour. Figures like William Compton, Francis Bryan and Nicholas Carew—hitherto
his jousting and sporting companions—were appointed to the Privy Chamber as
Henry’s body servants and increasingly became active political players, used as
representatives of the royal will and special messengers at home and abroad.
6
Accordingly, personal proximity and intimacy gained a political significance and the
Privy Chamber assumed a particular prominence within Tudor government.
The political importance of the Privy Chamber continued under Edward VI,
although, given his minority status, it was initially subverted and used to secure control
of the king.
7
Sir Michael Stanhope, Protector Somerset’s brother-in-law, was
appointed First Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, and other offices, as they fell vacant,
were filled by the Protector’s nominees. As such the Privy Chamber quickly became
little more than ‘an adjunct of Protector Somerset’s household’.
8
Yet, as John Murphy
has observed, ‘government by a Protector from his own household had none of the
legitimacy of the Privy Chamber politics of Henry VIII’s last years’. And in October
1549, the successful
coup d’état
of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, wrested
control of government and the young king away from Somerset.
9
Rather than subvert-
ing the political function of the Privy Chamber, Northumberland secured his ascen-
dancy by re-ordering the Privy Chamber in line with the king’s own, increasingly
articulated, preferences. Not only did Northumberland procure, as one eyewitness later
put it, ‘great frendes abowte the king’, but he ensured that all were co-religionists of
Edward: Sir Edward Rogers, Barnaby Fitzpatrick, Sir Henry Sidney and Sir Robert
Dudley all shared the king’s religion and his personal favour.
10
Significantly, no
religious conservatives were allowed office in the inner chambers of the palace even
though, as Geoffrey Elton observed, they had technical and numerical superiority on
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the council.
11
The Privy Chamber recovered an exclusive intimacy which marked it out
from the Privy Council and ensured that, in spite of the minority, it remained a second
centre of governance and politics.
Mary’s accession in 1553 changed the rules of the political game; such is the tradi-
tional verdict on Marian government. ‘All the Privy Chamber offices that had been the
most coveted in the household now fell into the hands of women. And this effectively
neutralised them.’
12
Accordingly, the Privy Chamber has been largely written out of
accounts of Marian politics; it ‘ceased to be an independent political body’, becoming
little more than a ‘glorified boudoir’.
13
Revisionist scholarship has emphasised the
political importance of women at court—particularly in the promotion of suits for
pardon or patronage, their role as religious patrons and in the gathering of informa-
tion—but it nevertheless remains true that the feminised Privy Chamber was
relatively
depoliticised during Mary’s reign.
14
The traditional perception of a depoliticised Privy Chamber has had profound
implications for the study of politics and governance during Mary’s reign. Without this
acknowledged second centre of politics, historians have failed to identify the ‘politics
of intimacy’ that, as in the reigns of Mary’s male predecessors, lay at the heart of gover-
nance. Instead political accounts of the reign have been generally limited to the Privy
Council—the formal heart of government—and to the experienced politicians who
dominated the council board.
15
Yet these ‘men of experience’—William Petre, William
Paget and William Paulet, for example—had formerly served Henry VIII or Edward VI
and had, to varying degrees, acted against Mary during the years before. They had been
reappointed to the Privy Council by the queen as an act of political expediency but they
did not have her trust and favour. The implications of this lack of trust have not been
fully explored and historians of the reign have fundamentally underestimated the
political value of trust and fidelity over political experience.
The primary focus on the Privy Council as the centre of government has also had
profound implications for an understanding of Marian queenship. Mary has been
presented as an indecisive monarch who failed to manage a faction-ridden Privy Coun-
cil.
16
In a recent article focusing exclusively on the Privy Council, Dale Hoak has
claimed that with the ‘administrative coup’, which secured the predominance of the
former Edwardian councillors, ‘control’ of the Council was ‘wrested’ from Mary.
17
However, the implication that Mary was somehow distanced from politics takes too
little account of Mary’s perception of government and of policy making. For Mary,
policy was an expression of faith and conducted according to the dictates of her
conscience; and she was far more closely involved with the key policies of the reign than
Hoak’s account suggests.
This article will argue that despite the relative depoliticisation of the Privy Chamber,
a politics of intimacy continued to characterise Tudor government during Mary’s
reign. However, the Privy Chamber was no longer the theatre within which a politics
of intimacy was exclusively played out. Instead, Mary’s arena of intimacy was a more
amorphous sphere within the royal household and her male political intimates—tradi-
tionally written out of political accounts of the reign—enjoyed a position of trust,
access and favour comparable to those of Henry VIII. Indeed the key decisions of the
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reign—the Spanish marriage, reunion with Rome and war with France—were taken
outside of the Privy Council and in the sphere of intimacy that surrounded her. Less a
weak-willed and easily influenced woman distanced from politics and policy making,
Mary can be understood as a determined and resolute monarch who ultimately proved
to be very much her own woman.
Whilst Henry’s political intimates were jousting and sporting companions, the ‘great
frendes’ around Edward and Mary were their princely familiars and co-religionists.
Whilst Edward’s trusted intimates were Protestant, proven Catholic loyalty was the key
to access to Mary. Accordingly, during the mid-Tudor period, religious loyalty can be
seen to have acquired a particular political value that in many ways transcended the
value of political experience. Many of Mary’s familiars had served in her princely
household and had been her companions during the years when all she held true and
legitimate—her parents’ marriage, her place in the succession and the Catholic
Church—was challenged. Robert Rochester, Henry Jerningham and Edward Walde-
grave had even been imprisoned for their devotion to Mary and to the Catholic mass
which she continued to practise.
18
Many of the same figures had masterminded her
successful counter
coup
against the Duke of Northumberland’s conspiracy which
sought to place Lady Jane Grey on the throne.
19
Such were the bonds of trust between
Mary and these figures that on her accession they were appointed to positions within
the royal household: Robert Rochester became Comptroller, Edward Waldegrave,
Master of the Wardrobe, Edward Hastings, Master of the Horse, Francis Englefield,
Master of the Wards and Henry Jerningham, Vice-Chamberlain.
20
Household Government
Like the political intimates of Henry VIII’s Privy Chamber, Mary’s household men
controlled access, presented petitions and acted as intermediaries. Robert Rochester,
for example, clearly assumed a position of influence that surpassed his official position
as Comptroller. The imperial ambassadorial despatch of 16 August 1553 described
how, before Mary’s departure to Richmond, the ambassadors ‘sent a messenger to her
controller [Rochester] … to ask for private audience for one of us’.
21
Not only was
Rochester being approached to grant access but also to arrange a private audience that
circumvented normal procedure. Again in June 1556 Rochester operated as a conduit
to the queen. In his letter of 22 June to Francis Talbot, the Earl of Shrewsbury, Robert
Swift describes how ‘her L.[adyship] [Lady Bray] wente to the Cowtre and ther speke
w[i]t[h] the Co[n]troller and delyvered yor letter’ who gave her ‘verey fayre words and
mad[e] her fayre promises: and in lyke case w[i]t[h] the Solyster [William Cordell]:
and they both p[ro]mised her frome daye to daye she sh[o]uld speke w[i]t[h] the
Quene’.
22
Other household intimates apparently played a similar role.
23
Whilst Mary’s Privy Chamber was predominantly a female sanctum, some Catholic
men of proven service did continue to hold posts. Although Gentlemen of Mary’s Privy
Chamber, such as James Bassett and Anthony Kempe, were not in positions of bodily
intimacy, they continued to enjoy political influence. On 8 May 1555, for example,
Edward Courtenay wrote to James Basset requesting him to ‘be a suitor’ to his uncle
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John Blount for a licence to travel.
24
Besides his role as Chief Gentleman of the Privy
Chamber, Bassett also served as Mary’s private secretary. His correspondence with
William Paget demonstrates that he handled communications directed to the Queen,
promoted state papers for signature and acted as an intermediary between Mary and
the ‘professional’ politicians of the council such as William Paget. In his letter to Paget
of 14 December 1556 Bassett writes of how having received his letter he was ‘called for
by the Queens highness vpon thoccasion of certeyn byls which her maiestie then signed
giving me order for the deliuering of them’. Presented with the opportunity, Basset
‘declared to her maiestie how I had even then receued a pacquette from your lordship’
and ‘dyd offer the same vnto her highnes to peruse’.
25
Mary read the letters in his pres-
ence and commented to him on its contents. In Paget’s response, Bassett’s role as an
intermediary is made clear: ‘I thanke youe for your paines taken in shewing my letters
to the qwenis maieste and according to her maiestes pleasure my letter to the kinges
maiestie shalbe ordred’.
26
Yet such a position of access and influence was no longer
limited to a place in the Privy Chamber. In a letter to Sir Henry Bedingfeld, Sir Henry
Jerningham, Vice-Chamberlain, describes how he had shown Bedingfeld’s two letters
to the Queen ‘which her grace received in good part with thanks’.
27
Such was their proximity and position of trust that Mary’s male intimates were also
used to represent the royal will. On 22 July 1556 Sir Edward Hastings, Master of the
Horse and a key figure in mobilising support in the succession crisis, instructed Sir
Henry Bedingfeld that ‘the queen majesty’s pleasure is that you shall suffer this bearer
Mr Turner to resort unto his brother and release him with all such things as you think
necessary’. The queen had specifically instructed Hastings to pass the message on: ‘this
being her highness pleasure she commanded me to signify it unto you’.
28
Similarly, in
August 1556, Robert Rochester and Henry Jerningham wrote to Bedingfeld from the
court at Eltham of how, in response to Lady Courtenay’s suit regarding the imprisoned
William Courtenay: ‘the Queen’s highness hath commanded us to give you knowledge
that her pleasure is that William Courtenay may dine and sup with you…’
29
Anthony
Kempe, Gentleman of the Privy Chamber performed a similar role. Writing to William
Cordell, the Queen’s solicitor in June 1556 concerning the Dudley conspirators, Kempe
declared ‘that the Queen’s majesty hath commanded me to signify unto you that hir
pleasure is that you shall go forward with the arraignment of Westforth tomorrow and
the other [Edward Verney] may be deferred until tomorrow’.
30
Given their position
close to the Queen, these figures also had ready access to news. For example, on 26 May
1554, Edward Hastings informed Bedingfeld that ‘yesterday the Queen’s highness
received advertisement from the earl of Bedford of his arrival in Spain, declaring that
the prince [Philip] mindeth to embark, the latter end of the month’.
31
The fact that
Hastings was aware of such news is significant and is indicative of his position of
intimacy.
As can be seen in these extracts, the pre-existing trust and favour enjoyed by Mary’s
princely familiars
did
translate into a political role at court. They inhabited a sphere of
intimacy which was not institutionally prescribed to the Privy Chamber but allowed
them to fulfil many of the functions performed by those Gentlemen active in the service
of Henry VIII. They also performed a representative role beyond the court. Like
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Henry’s Gentleman, they were used abroad as ‘chamber diplomats’ and messengers
accompanying the more traditional embassies. Unlike her father’s political intimates,
Mary’s ‘near familiars’ performed a very particular version of representation: they
served as intimate and trusted messengers between husband and wife during Philip’s
long absences abroad.
32
Anthony Kempe and James Bassett, Gentlemen of both Mary and Philip’s Privy
Chambers, were each employed in this manner.
33
Kempe’s letter of 25 February 1554
to Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon, reveals his industry as he apologises for not
having written earlier: ‘I have been such a post between Greenwich and Brussels that I
had little leisure to visit or use any remembrance to my friends’.
34
In their ambassado-
rial despatch of 11 July 1554, Courriéres and Renard, the imperial envoys, informed the
Emperor Charles V that Kempe had arrived the previous night at Farnham from Spain
bringing letters from his highness.
35
In late November 1555 Giovanni Michiel, the
Venetian ambassador, described how Philip’s return to England as ‘confirmed by his
letters to the Queen brought on the day before yesterday by her messenger, Mr. Kempe
besides what he reported by word of mouth, will take place at the latest at the
Epiphany’.
36
In his letter to Mary of 13 February 1556 Sir John Mason, ambassador to
the Emperor’s court at Brussels, wrote of how ‘Mr Kempe, the bearer, can certify her
Majesty of the good estate of the King, and on what terms the estate of this Court stands
at present’. Mason adds that ‘Mr Kempe will tell how great desire the king has to be
with her Majesty’.
37
James Bassett undertook similar messenger activity between Mary and Philip. In
April 1555 he was sent with a letter from the Council to Mason in Brussels and in
October, having been with the King at Brussels, Bassett assured Mary that Philip would
return ‘as speedily as possible’.
38
As Michiel, the Venetian ambassador, goes on to
describe in his despatch, ‘her Majesty, who had already commenced complaining, thus
remains comforted’.
39
In January 1558, Bassett was sent by Mary to give Philip the ‘sure
advice of her being pregnant’.
40
Only the most trusted messenger would suffice for
such intimate news.
Mary also sent Edward Hastings, her Master of the Horse, to represent her on the
continent, particularly at the imperial court. Whilst not a Gentleman of the Privy
Chamber, he was one of Mary’s closest intimates. On 5 November 1554 she informed
the Emperor that she was sending William Paget and Edward Hastings to Flanders to
make known her ‘good pleasure touching the coming hither of my cousin Cardinal
Pole’ and to accompany him to England. Paget and Hastings were also instructed to
visit the Emperor and acquaint him with the circumstances of the Cardinal’s mission.
41
Once more trust and experience were allied together in a necessary partnership. Henry
Jerningham, Vice-Chamberlain of the royal household, was also sent to the imperial
court. In May 1556 Mary’s letter to the Emperor reveals the details of Jerningham’s
mission: ‘he told me that your Majesty was pleased to take in good part the spirit in
which I accepted the journey of the King, my husband, to meet your Majesty. He also
gave me hopes that the King would shortly return to England’.
42
Whilst Gentlemen of
the Privy Chamber continued to be used as foreign envoys during Mary’s reign, so too
were other household intimates.
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Mary also used her trusted Catholic familiars within the realm as special messengers
and representatives of royal will in the midst of insurrection and threat. In response to
the threats posed by Wyatt’s rebellion, and later Dudley’s conspiracy, she relied partic-
ularly upon the personal loyalism of her own following. On 22 January 1554 Mary sent
Sir Edward Hastings and Sir Thomas Cornwallis as direct representatives of royal
authority to inform the rebels that if they were protesting at the Spanish marriage it was
‘the duty of true subjects to sue by petition and not with arms in their hands’. If the rebels
would lay down their arms, Hastings and Cornwallis were to offer negotiation.
43
Their
efforts were unsuccessful, but their proximity to and intimacy with Mary was thought
to add weight to their authority.
44
Thus, in his contemporary account of Wyatt’s rebel-
lion, John Proctor recognised Cornwallis and Hastings as ‘the Queen’s agents’.
45
Queenship
Mary’s use of male political intimates and an informal political sphere calls for a revision
of the traditional understanding of Marian governance. Mary never attended the Privy
Council, but she was conscientious and determined to be closely involved in government
business and policy-making. As Michiel, the Venetian ambassador, said, she rose ‘at
daybreak when, after saying her prayers and hearing mass in private, she transacts
business incessantly until after midnight’.
46
An understanding of the nature of policy-
making during Mary’s reign requires an appreciation of her innate eccentricity towards
English government which grew out of her experiences during the years before her acces-
sion. Whilst she received counsel within the informal political sphere that surrounded
her, in the key policy decisions of the reign she ultimately sidelined both the council
and
her trusted intimates. The only significant and consistent influence on Mary was
Spanish, first through her attachment to the Emperor Charles V and later her husband
Philip.
The imperial campaign for a Spanish match between Mary and Philip of Spain, son
of the Emperor, was pursued from the outset in the extra-conciliar arena of counsel
that centred on Mary. Throughout the marriage negotiations, Mary maintained a
distance from the professional politicians of the council and only formally approached
them to present them with a
fait accompli
. Her principal source of counsel was the
imperial ambassador, Simon Renard, who, as representative of Charles V, Mary’s Cath-
olic cousin, quickly won her trust and confidence. Throughout the early months of the
reign, the Spanish match was continually discussed between Mary and the ambassador.
Renard described how Mary dared not speak to anyone except the Spanish envoys as
‘she could not trust her council too much, well knowing the particular character of its
members’.
47
As such, Mary wrote to Renard in what became a typical refrain and indic-
ative of the dynamics of policy making and the location of counsel: ‘I would like to
speak to you in private before doing so in the council’s presence’.
48
On 28 October at
a private meeting Philip was formally proposed and two days later Mary accepted. It
was only after Mary’s decision had been made that Renard formally presented the
proposal to six members of the council.
49
As Penry Williams has observed, ‘once she
[Mary] had decided, she pretended to consult the council but this was no more than a
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formality’.
50
As Mary declared, ‘she felt inspired by God… and her mind, once made
up would never change’.
51
Whilst Mary ignored the petitions for an English match from her household men,
their machinations in opposition to the Spanish match nevertheless demonstrate their
position of access within an informal sphere of political intimacy. Although devoted to
Mary on personal and religious grounds, her most trusted intimates opposed the Span-
ish marriage because they feared it would jeopardise the restoration of Catholicism in
England and the preservation of national integrity. In his despatch of 14 September,
Renard wrote of how Stephen Gardiner, Robert Rochester, Francis Englefield and
Edward Waldegrave had spoken to the Queen ‘persuading her to marry and naming
Courtenay as a desirable and acceptable match’.
52
The mere fact that they had access to
Mary and could do so undoubtedly suggests a position of political proximity. The same
group, with the addition of Richard Southwell, repeated their petition on 21 October.
As Renard reports, Mary described how these ‘trusty counsellors’ had declared to her
that ‘she would do well to give some thought to their advice which was dictated by
whole-hearted affection and devotion to her service, for they had emboldened
themselves to speak in the knowledge that they were her oldest servants’; the Queen
answered that she ‘could never take the advice of such trusty counsellors in bad part’.
53
The very nature of the advice given to Mary by her household intimates suggests that
far from being politically inept and naïve, their counsel was considered and politically
astute.
54
Whilst Sir Francis Englefield argued that as Philip had a kingdom of his own
he would not wish to leave it, Sir Edward Waldegrave contended that a Spanish
marriage would mean the country ‘would have to go to war with the French’.
55
That
Mary’s meetings with these household figures took place before the marital alliance had
been formally declared to the council is indicative of the location of a second centre of
counsel, albeit ‘negative’ counsel in this case. Mary emerges as a resolute figure who,
though arguably misguided, demonstrated determined and independent decision
making.
Mary’s decisions to restore links with Rome were also taken outside the formal
arena of counsel—the Privy Council. In a letter of early August announcing her
accession, Mary had made secret overtures to Pope Julius III to remit all ecclesiastical
censures against the kingdom in order to restore links with the apostolic see. At this
point, Mary was ‘taking counsel’ with her household servants: these overtures were
not yet known by the Privy Council.
56
In response to Mary’s approach, two papal
envoys were secretly despatched to England. Cardinal Commendone, papal nuncio,
came on behalf of Pope Julius, and Henry Penning under instructions from Pole.
Both had secret audiences with the queen in which Mary made representations for
papal absolution in advance of the coronation. Penning clearly acknowledged the
extra-conciliar nature of the directive as in his report to the pope he wrote of how
Mary ‘did not impart her negotiations with me to any of the Lords of the Council
nor to anyone else’.
57
This is particularly revealing. Not only was the council not to
be informed of Penning’s meeting with the queen, but nor were her most trusted
Catholic intimates. This was a negotiation conducted by Mary alone. Pole arrived in
England in November 1554 and the reunion with Rome was accomplished; England
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was once more a Catholic country, and Mary had achieved her primary goal without
recourse to the Privy Council.
The descent into war with France also reflected an extra-conciliar process that
centred on the queen.
58
Whilst the Privy Council was resolutely opposed to any
measure that would compromise English neutrality and raise the prospect of war with
the papacy, who were at that time allied with the French, so too were Mary’s house-
hold intimates. The negotiations that led to the declaration of war were firmly centred
on Mary’s person and her desire to satisfy her husband. They reveal the extremely
personal nature of the monarchy under Mary: the extent to which political intimacy
and counsel were translated into real political influence was entirely dictated by the
queen. In supporting Philip’s request for English aid she isolated herself from both
spheres of counsel, the formal and the informal. Whilst Mary and figures such as
Robert Rochester and Edward Waldegrave might be united by shared experiences,
friendship and even their Catholicism, war with France had demonstrated that their
‘Englishness’ and Mary’s ‘Spanishness’ ultimately divided Mary’s political intimates
from herself.
59
The evidence about the dynamics of policy making suggests an alternative view of
Marian politics from that which has dominated accounts of Marian government to
date. Far from being distanced from the formulation of policy, decision making was
resolutely personal and ultimately lay with Mary alone. There was no absence of
leadership and the verdict of the imperial ambassador Simon Renard that Mary was
‘easily influenced, inexpert in worldly matters and a novice all round’ can be
questioned.
60
Though his assessment of the failure of Marian government has been
accepted by generations of historians, it can instead be argued that it was perhaps the
very fact that Mary was not ‘easily influenced’ by domestic counsellors that
ultimately undermined her government and policy making. As Geoffrey Elton
acknowledged, Mary consistently ‘broke the rules of the political game’. However,
Elton argued that such rule-breaking was based on the fact that Mary made ‘no effort
to retain the support of that aristocratic layer of society—nobility and gentry—on
whose voluntary and conscientious cooperation Tudor government depended’.
Rather, she ‘put her trust in advisers as ill-instructed in the country she governed as
she was’.
61
Yet the evidence suggests this was in fact not the case and Mary’s ‘ill-
instructed’ trusted advisers demonstrated wisdom enough in the counsel they
offered. During the negotiations for the Spanish match they argued that it would
cause rebellion and lead England to war with France. And on the basis of their
Catholicism they opposed the war with France. On both counts they might be
considered correct. Mary broke the political rules by removing herself from any
domestic advice, instead only listening to the Emperor or Philip. To understand fully
the dynamics of policy making it is necessary to have a far less Anglo-centred focus
than has dominated accounts hitherto. Nevertheless, what is clear is that Mary
remained the final arbiter and, though inhabiting what was traditionally a male
world of monarchy, the personality of the monarch continued to be the key to the
determination and execution of policy.
62
The Marian regime was, in short, an
emphatically personal monarchy.
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A. Whitelock
Notes
1
[1] J. G. Nichols (Ed.) (1852)
The Chronicle of Queen Jane and of Two Years of Queen Mary and
especially of the Rebellion of Sir Thomas Wyatt
(London: Camden Society, 1st series, 48), pp.
27–28.
2
[2] D. MacCulloch (Ed.) (1984)
The Vita Mariae Angliae Reginae of Robert Wingfield of Brantham
(London: Camden Society, 4th series, 29), p. 274.
3
[3] Work on Mary’s household has been limited. Edward Chambers bypasses the years 1547–58
in his study of the organisation of the court. See E. K. Chambers (1923)
The Elizabethan Stage
,
4 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Similarly, Robert Braddock’s dissertation on office-holding
in the royal household is limited in its comment concerning the Marian household. See R. C.
Braddock (1971)
The Royal Household, 1540–60: a study in office-holding in Tudor England
(unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Northwestern University). Pam Wright’s study of the royal house-
hold under Elizabeth I, written as if Mary’s reign had never existed, ignores the ‘change in
direction’ brought about by Mary’s accession. However, some of Wright’s conclusions can be
projected back to inform a study of Mary’s reign. See P. Wright (1987) A Change in Direction:
the ramifications of a female household, 1558–1603, in D. Starkey (Ed.)
The English Court
from the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War
(London: Longman), pp. 147–172. Charlotte
Merton’s doctoral thesis focuses on the political and domestic role of the women of the
Marian and Elizabethan Privy Chamber: C. Merton (1992)
The Women Who Served Queen
Mary and Queen Elizabeth: ladies, gentlewomen and maids of the Privy Chamber, 1553–1603
(unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge). John Murphy has made the most signif-
icant contribution in his chapter on the Edwardian and Marian Privy Chambers. See J.
Murphy (1987) The Illusion of Decline: the Privy Chamber, 1547–1558, in Starkey (Ed.),
The
English Court
, pp. 119–146. Murphy points to the continued political and administrative rele-
vance of the Privy Chamber during Mary’s reign.
4
[4] MacCulloch (Ed.),
Vita Mariae
, pp. 275–276.
5
[5] For the development of the Privy Chamber under Henry VII and Henry VIII see D. Starkey
(1987) Intimacy and Innovation: the rise of the Privy Chamber, 1485–1547, in Starkey (Ed.),
The English Court
, pp. 71–118.
6
[6] Ibid., pp. 82–92. For a discussion of the symbolic representative role of these figures see also
D. Starkey (1997) Representation through Intimacy: a study in the symbolism of monarchy
and court office in early modern England, in J. Guy (Ed.)
The Tudor Monarchy (London:
Arnold), pp. 42–78.7
[7] For the development of the Privy Chamber under Edward VI see D. Hoak (1982) The King’s
Privy Chamber, 1547–1553, in D. J. Guth & J. W. McKenna (Eds) Tudor Rule and Revolutions:
essays for G. R. Elton from his American friends (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp.
87–108, and Murphy, ‘The Illusion of Decline’, pp. 121–140.8
[8] Murphy, ‘The Illusion of Decline’, p. 121.9
[9] Ibid., p. 127.10
[10] British Library, Add. MS 48126, fols 15v–16, cited in Hoak, ‘The King’s Privy Chamber’, p. 87.11
[11] Murphy, ‘The Illusion of Decline’, p. 138. See also G. R. Elton (1977) Reform and Reformation:
England 1509–1558 (London: Arnold), p. 351.12
[12] Murphy, ‘The Illusion of Decline’, p. 140.13
[13] S. Adams (1982) Faction, Clientage and Party: English politics, 1550–1603, History Today, 32,
p. 36. Similarly, Pam Wright describes how the Privy Chamber under Elizabeth ‘retreated into
mere domesticity’: Wright, ‘A Change in Direction’, p. 150.14
[14] In her doctoral thesis, Charlotte Merton argued that ‘whilst at face value the women of the
Privy Chamber were wholly domestic… this does not take into account the informal way in
which life at court, especially political life, was conducted. This unofficial work on behalf of
complex networks of importunate clients and as gleaners of information was vital’ (Merton,
The Women Who Served Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth). More generally, scholars such as
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Women’s History Review 333
Barbara Harris have argued for the political significance of aristocratic women at court. See B.
J. Harris (2002) English Aristocratic Women 1450–1550, especially ch. 9 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press). See also J. Daybell (Ed.) (2004) Women and Politics in Early Modern
England (Aldershot: Ashgate).15
[15] Typical studies of this conciliar preoccupation with Mary’s reign are: Elton, Reform and Refor-
mation; D. Loades (1991; reprint edition) The Reign of Mary Tudor: politics, government and
religion in England 1553–1558 (London: Longman); D. Hoak (1986) Two Revolutions in
Tudor Government: the formation and organisation of Mary I’s Privy Council, in C. Coleman
& D. Starkey (Eds) Revolution Reassessed: studies in Tudor government and administration
(Oxford: Clarendon Press), pp. 87–115.16
[16] The idea of Mary as a weak monarch has been a fundamental part of the whole theory of a
‘mid-Tudor crisis’. For example, David Loades has emphasised the ‘numerous and deep
divisions’ in the Privy Council and described Mary as ‘often confused and lacking in self-
confidence’: Loades, The Reign of Mary Tudor, pp. 394–395.17
[17] Hoak, ‘Two Revolutions in Tudor Government’, p. 91.18
[18] For a detailed discussion of the role of such figures during the years before 1553 see A. M.
Whitelock (2004) In Opposition and in Government: the households and affinities of Mary
Tudor 1516–1558 (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge).19
[19] For a contemporary account of the coup which celebrates the role of Mary’s household see
MacCulloch (Ed.), Vita Mariae, pp. 244–301.20
[20] When Sir John Gage, Lord Chamberlain, died in the summer of 1556 he was replaced by Sir
Edward Hastings. Hastings was himself succeeded as Master of the Horse by Sir Henry
Jerningham. Sir Henry Bedingfeld, who had been one of the first to rally in support of Mary in
the succession crisis, in turn succeeded Jerningham. When Sir Robert Rochester died in the
autumn of 1557 another Marian loyalist, Sir Thomas Cornwallis, replaced him as
Comptroller.21
[21] R. Tyler (Ed.) (1862–1969) Calendar of State Papers, Spanish, 1553–1558 (hereafter CSP Span)
(London), xi, p. 166.22
[22] Talbot Papers, vol. P, fol. 279 printed in E. Lodge (Ed.) (1791) Illustrations of British History,
Biography and Manners in the Reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth and James I,
exhibited in a series of original papers, i, 216 (London).23
[23] See the letter in May 1558 from the same Robert Swift to the Earl of Shrewsbury. Ibid., vol. P,
fol. 349 (i, 299).24
[24] Public Record Office (hereafter PRO) SP 11/5 no. 14 as abstracted in C. S. Knighton (Ed.)
(1998) Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reign of Mary I preserved in the Public
Record Office (hereafter CSP Dom Mary), p. 168 (London).25
[25] B. L. Beer & S. M. Jack (Eds) (1974) The Letters of William Lord Paget of Beaudesert, 1547–63,
Camden Miscellany, 25 (London: Camden Society, 4th series, 13), pp. 139–144.26
[26] ‘The letters of William, Lord Paget of Beaudesert’, pp. 117–119.27
[27] Uncatalogued Bedingfeld Papers at Oxburgh Hall, Sir Henry Jerningham to Sir Henry
Bedingfeld, 25 February, 1556.28
[28] Bedingfeld Papers, Sir Edward Hastings to Sir Henry Bedingfeld, 22 July, 1556.29
[29] Bedingfeld Papers, Sir Robert Rochester and Sir Henry Jerningham to Sir Henry Bedingfeld,
9 August, 1556.30
[30] Bedingfeld Papers, Sir Anthony Kempe to William Cordell, c.30 June 1556.31
[31] Bedingfeld Papers, Sir Edward Hastings to Sir Henry Bedingfeld, 26 May 1554.32
[32] For diplomatic activities of Henry VIII’s intimates see Starkey, ‘Intimacy and Innovation’,
pp. 84–86.33
[33] Kempe had in fact been maintaining contact with Mary and the imperial court since before
her accession. On the eve of her coronation, Mary requested Kempe’s return for a two or three
month stay; see, CSP Span, xi, pp. 257, 275. In fact Kempe returned indefinitely and from
1554 onwards he served as a messenger between England and the continent.
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334 A. Whitelock
34
[34] PRO, SP 11/7 no. 11 (CSP Dom Mary, p. 313).35
[35] CSP Span, xii, p. 310.36
[36] R. Brown (Ed.) (1864–98) Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts, relating to English affairs,
existing in the Archives and Collections of Venice (hereafter CSP Ven), vii, i, 289 (London),
p. 262 .37
[37] W. B Turnbull (Ed.) (1861) Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, 1553–8 (London), p. 210.38
[38] PRO, SP 11/5 no. 8, fols 65–66v (CSP Dom Mary, p. 162).39
[39] CSP Ven, viii, p. 207.40
[40] CSP Ven, vi, iii, p. 1432.41
[41] CSP Span, xiii, pp. 77, 87–92.42
[42] CSP Span, xiii, p. 267.43
[43] PRO, SP 11/2 no. 9 (CSP Dom Mary, no. 31). In the calendar of state papers this letter is dated
22 January. See the debate in D. Loades (1965) Two Tudor Conspiracies (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press), p. 53.44
[44] Cornwallis had been a loyal Catholic in the succession crisis and replaced Robert Rochester as
Comptroller on his death in 1557. Cornwallis’s wife Anne was a lady of the Privy Chamber
from the beginning of Mary’s reign.45
[45] J. Proctor (1903) Historie of Wyate’s Rebellion, in A. Pollard (Ed.) Tudor Tracts 1532–1558
(London: Archibald Constable), p. 237.46
[46] CSP Ven, v, pp. 532–533.47
[47] CSP Span, xi, pp. 251–252.48
[48] Ibid., p. 324.49
[49] Ibid., p. 349.50
[50] P. Williams (1995) The Later Tudors: England 1547–1603 (Oxford: Clarendon Press), p. 89.51
[51] CSP Span, xi, p. 328.52
[52] Ibid., p. 236.53
[53] Ibid., p. 310.54
[54] Pollard said of Mary’s faithful household servants ‘in their counsel there was little wisdom’: A.
F. Pollard (1910) The History of England from the Accession of Edward VI to the death of Eliza-
beth (London: Longmans), p. 95.55
[55] CSP Span, xi, p. 312.56
[56] MacCulloch (Ed.), Vita Mariae, p. 252.57
[57] CSP Ven, v, p. 431.58
[58] Much work on Philip’s role in English government remains to be done although a detailed
discussion of his position within Mary’s sphere of intimacy falls outside the scope of this
article. The main published work on Philip is D. Loades (1988) Philip II and the Government
of England, in C. Cross, D. Loades & J. Scarisbrick (Eds) Law and Government under the
Tudors: essays presented to Sir Geoffrey Elton, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press),
pp. 177–194 and G. Redworth (1997) Matters Impertinent to Women: male and female
monarchy under Philip and Mary, English Historical Review, 112, pp. 597–613.59
[59] This was also true in terms of the marriage and is thrown into sharp relief by the fact that John
Leigh, one of Mary’s household men, became a French informer in an effort to block the
Queen’s plans for a Spanish match. See E. H. Harbison (1940) French Intrigue at the Court of
Queen Mary I, American Historical Review, 65, pp. 542–545.60
[60] CSP Span, xi, p. 228.61
[61] Elton, Reform and Reformation, p. 395.62
[62] S. J. Gunn (1995) The Structures of Politics in Early Tudor England, Transactions of the Royal
Historical Society, 6th series, 5, p. 86.
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