Then Mary’s great comfort, her mother, Catherine of Aragon, passed
away. Given the circumstances of the pregnancy, and a sudden grave illness of
the inconvenient first Queen, Mary’s mother, Charles and Chapuys were desperate
enough to go to unheard of extremes.
Catherine (officially reduced from Queen to “dowager princess”)
suddenly began wasting away amidst bouts of vomiting. Such symptoms could point
to poisoning. During a brief visit of four days from Chapuys she seemed to
recover. Immediately after he left she relapsed. On January 7th she
died. Chapuys reported his fear that “the good Princess will die of grief, or that
the concubine will hasten what she has long threatened to do, viz., to kill her”.[1]
The situation was dire.
Catherine had left
Mary items from her wardrobe. The King ordered that the clothing be placed
under his care. Chapuys went to Thomas Cromwell, the King’s Chamberlain, who
informed him “that if the Princess wished to have what had been given her she
must first show herself obedient to her father”.[2]
It appears that Charles and Chapuys had been hatching a plan
to rescue Mary from England even before her mother’s death. On the 29th
of January Chapuys informed the Emperor that he feared “that the time for the
enterprise has gone by, at least for a while, seeing that [the Princess] is to
be removed in six days from the place where everything was prepared, and would
have been removed already, but for the arrangements for the Queen's burial, to
a place very unsuitable for the attempt.”[3]
For his part, Henry VIII, and/or his counselors, appear to
have been aware of the danger of the Catholics rallying around the princess.
Mary would be moved from residence to residence living in each only for a brief
time.
As soon as February 10th, the ambassador reports:
Yesterday arrived the person sent by M. du Rosulx to
investigate the means for the enterprise, and to inform me of what he proposed
to do for his part. But, as I have twice written, I fear that the opportunity
is gone. I await, however, the answer of the personage whom the matter
concerns, by which we must be guided, and consult how the affair may be
accomplished.
Plans were being considered that might spirit the princess
away to the continent on short notice. Agents are actively being recruited.
On the same date, the funeral of Catherine was taking place.
During the previous days
the royal corpse was conducted for nine miles of the country,
i.e., three French leagues, as far as the abbey of Sautry, where the abbot and his
monks received it and placed it under a canopy in the choir of the church, under
an "estalage" prepared for it, which contained 408 candles, which burned
during the vigils that day and next day at mass. Next day a solemn mass was
chanted in the said abbey of Sautry, by the bishop of Ely, during which in the
middle of the church 48 torches of rosin were carried by as many poor men, with
mourning hoods and garments.
In 1536, there still remained a considerable number of trepidatious
Catholic churches and monasteries in England. Sautry was a monastery of no
particular distinction.
Katherine’s directions that her funeral also be Catholic were
not honored. Her “body was borne in the same order to the abbey of
Peterborough, where at the door of the church it was honorably received by the
bishops of Lincoln, Ely, and Rochester”.
The funeral service was a blatant insult. Probably under order of the Court.
Immediately after the offering was completed the bishop of
Rochester preached the same as all the preachers of England for two years have
not ceased to preach, viz., against the power of the Pope, whom they call
bishop of Rome, and against the marriage of the said good Queen and the King,
Surely, Henry himself ordered the final touch.
alleging against all truth that in the hour of death she
acknowledged she had not been queen of England.
Chapuys could not let such a matter pass un-refuted in his
report. Surely he could not in his conversation, either.
I say against all truth, because at that hour she ordered a
writing to be made in her name addressed to the King as her husband, and to the
ambassador of the Emperor, her nephew, which she signed with these words
Katharine, queen of England commending her ladies and servants to the favor of
the said ambassador.
Strangely, he makes no mention of Princess Mary being
present. But then only very few persons were permitted to attend.
Stranger still, Queen Anne suffered a miscarriage at nearly
the same time. The child had been a boy.
As matters seemed to grow more pressing, Mary's champions
continued to plan her escape. But her household was moved again.
The house where she is at present is much more inconvenient
for the enterprise than the former one. In the first place, it is 15 miles
further from Gravesend, where lord Roeulx intends her to embark.
The plan had been to place her aboard a ship out of
Gravesend, the closest point of embarkation outside of London. They expected to
have her onboard before anyone noticed.
But Henry kept moving her from one location to another. And,
then, he himself suddenly began to treat her like a beloved daughter. In light of Boleyn’s
miscarriage, and the recent death of even his illegitimate son, she was his
only heir. Her household was expanded and generously funded.
By the end of March, Charles has begun to plan another sort
of rescue. Henry reportedly intended only a short time before to marry Mary off
to one or another foreign gentleman of no noble pretensions. The danger that
she might claim the throne would be all but ended by such a move.
Charles V saw this as her salvation. He sent directions to
his ambassador accordingly.
you will endeavour discreetly to discover to what match the
king of England leans; and, as of yourself, and in such wise that no one can
presume it is part of your charge, you may suggest Don Loys of Portugal, our
brother-in-law
*
By this means the Princess might be drawn out of the kingdom,
rescued from continual danger of her life, and allied with a person of suitable
quality; and, when the time came, might be assisted by her allies in obtaining
her right;[4]
That plan also came to naught.
[1] Letters
and Papers, Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII, Volume 10. 21-2.
[2]
Ibid. 50. Jan. 21.
[3]
Ibid. 69. Jan. 29.
[4]
Ibid. 224, 226. March 28.
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