A Mother and Husband to the Realm? How Mary’s Speech as Queen Helped Elizabeth I

Yesterday I came across an article by Cristy Beemer published only a month ago on ‘The Female Monarchy: Rhetorical Strategy of Early Modern Rule’ (Rhetoric Review, 30, 8, pp. 258-74). The article explores the manner in which Mary and Elizabeth, England’s first queen regnants, presented themselves to a kingdom accustomed only to male rulers. Beemer identified Mary and Elizabeth’s tendencies to employ ‘the figures of the spouse, the mother, and the maiden to embody conventional roles for women in Tudor society’ (p. 259) though naturally these two occupied very remarkable roles for women of that age. Unlike other ‘mothers’ and ‘maidens’ they were not answerable to a male figure. Like their fellow Tudor monarchs, they expected to be recognised as the superior authority in the realm. Their bodies, Beemer argues, naturally invoked traditional gendered roles but at the same time their speech denied such roles. In other words, Mary and Elizabeth did not adopt submissive language but rather formulated speech that demonstrated their authority, their independence as rulers – their right to govern as powerfully and freely as their male predecessors.


But it is Beemer’s specific focus on Mary’s speech that I wanted to draw attention to. Like several recent historians, namely Judith Richards, Beemer argues that Elizabeth had a lot to thank her sister for as Mary of course governed first, challenged preconceived notions of female rule first, tested the waters so to speak, and made mistakes which proved equally valuable for Elizabeth. It is Mary’s speech before the Guildhall in 1554 that Beemer focuses on specifically. In 1554 the rebels of Wyatt’s uprising (primarily a protest against Mary’s prospective marriage to Philip of Spain) marched towards the city of London and the authorities were anxious that they would receive a warm reception once they got there or at least could not be held outside the city. Mary, who was advised to leave the capital, decided to stay and give a rousing speech at the Guildhall, which won her acclaim and plenty of support. During the speech, Mary declared that she was,

‘...wedded to the realm and laws of the same (the spousal ring whereof I have on my finger, which never hitherto was, nor hereafter shall be left off), you promised allegiance and obedience to me’ (p. 263).


Beemer points out that Mary very deliberately avoided calling herself a ‘wife’. She is ‘wedded’ to her kingdom but she employs the word ‘spouse’. She does not cast herself in the submissive role of a wife who was expected to obey her husband duly. Thus Mary gives her subjects no reason to believe they hold the power to command her; ‘Mary takes on the role as the person to whom obedience is sworn’ (p. 264). Beemer concludes ‘in one of the first examples of the strategy of gender play that female monarchs used to establish ethos, Mary will not be a wife to England, but rather, a husband’ (ibid).


In the same speech Mary went on to refer to herself as a ‘prince and governor’ instead of just using the term ‘queen’. Beemer points out (and I never noticed this before), that the Oxford English Dictionary attributes the first reference to a female sovereign as ‘prince’ to Geste’s 1560 sermon where he is referencing to Elizabeth I.* But Mary endorsed this term as early as 1554 (Beemer does point out rightly that the Guildhall speech was first recorded after Mary’s death but if accurate, and there is wide consensus that the speech is correct, it was still said by Mary six years before Geste used the term). Elizabeth described herself as ‘prince’ on numerous occasions. She was obviously supporting existing terminology advanced earlier by Mary who was keen to emphasise her similarity to male counterparts.


As everyone knows, Mary went on to marry and hoped the union would produce children, namely that longed for Catholic Tudor-Habsburg heir. How did a pregnant queen, or one who hoped of bearing heirs in the immediate future, continue with her image as a ruler whose power and rights matched a king’s? Beemer points out again that Mary continued this dual role; she emphasised her female body, namely her ability to produce children but in the same breath she explained that she hoped to continue the dynastic line like ‘my progenitors have done before’ (p. 265). Beemer explains that ‘Mary’s careful choice of the word progenitors is rhetorically savvy. Unlike the neutral gender marking of the Latin origin of prince, princeps, the term progenitors is gendered masculine in the Latin. Like the male princes before her, Mary’s ruling progenitors are exclusively male. Evoking a history of men, the discussion of succession is changed. Mary places her fertility on a level playing field with the men who came before her; the issue is one of succession only and not complicated by her gender. Although her female body signifies difference, her single status is no more problematic than any of the single men who ruled before her.’ (Ibid). The rest of the article chiefly concerns Elizabeth ‘mirroring’ her sister. And if we credit Beemer’s arguments, she was a useful model of queenship to follow.



Beemer’s article is well worth reading and I probably haven’t done it enough justice here. She is not the first, nor probably the last historian to draw attention to the legacy Mary left to Elizabeth, an inheritance which has forever been seen in a negative fashion (loss of Calais, religious turmoil, etc), but which was more fruitful than many have liked to admit.




Full article: Cristy Beemer, ‘The Female Monarchy: Rhetorical Strategy of Early Modern Rule’, Rhetoric Review, 30, 8 (2011), pp. 258-74.



* For those who don’t have a subscription to the OxfordED, here is the relevant entry:

Prince
Applied to a female sovereign. Obs.


1560 Geste Serm. in H. G. Dugdale Life (1840) App. i. 191 Let us low our prince [sc. Q. Eliz.],‥nothing thinking sayeng or doyng that may turne to hyr dyshonor, prayeng all way for hyr long and prosperus reigne.

Course on Tudor Queens at Oxford and other news

I have been neglecting this blog though certainly not due to any lack of interest in Mary Tudor. I have busy starting university and with this have moved to a new city, hence no time to update this site. However a few weeks back I noticed that there is to be a one day course at Oxford University on the subject of queenship in Tudor England (entitled Tudor Queens: Myth and Actuality), which involves two lectures including the example of Mary. Anna Whitelock, whose biography of Mary came out this year, will be speaking. I’m going and will post information regarding the discussions on this blog. The website states that places are still available:


http://www.conted.ox.ac.uk/courses/details.php?id=O09P104HIJ



Since my last entry I have noticed a date for the upcoming book, Alice Hunt and Anna Whitelock (eds.), Tudor Queens: The Reigns of Mary and Elizabeth (Palgrave - I have noticed the title of this book is listed differently on various sites). Apparently it is due out in May 2010 and is 256 pages long. Whitelock has also contributed an article in the recently released book, Liz Oakley-Brown and Louise Wilkinson (eds.), Rituals and Rhetoric of Queenship (Four Courts Press, 2009). The article is entitled ‘Mary: the First Queen of England’.In the same book, S.L. Müller, has written an article entitled ‘Representing the body of Mary Tudor’, which sounds really interesting:


http://www.fourcourtspress.ie/product.php?intProductID=881




There seems to be a succession of works relating to female rule in early modern Europe, some of which will hopeful discuss Mary. One to look out for is Sharon L. Jansen, The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe (out Feb 2010).

Review of Judith Richards, Mary Tudor (2008)

I wanted to find a detailed, excellently written review of Judith M. Richards’s biography on Mary. Unfortunately such reviews have been published in journals which, though I can access, I am not allowed to post elsewhere owing to tedious copyright issues! So I have decided not to be lazy and have written my own review. Needless to say it is not of the calibre of the others!


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Judith M. Richards, Mary Tudor (Routledge, London and New York, 2008)



In 1557 the Venetian ambassador, Giovanni Michiel, wrote a lengthy report on the appearance and personality of Queen Mary I, that has become a valuable source in the examination of this figure. Mary was, he claimed, a woman of ‘wonderful grandeur and dignity, knowing what became the dignity of a sovereign as well as any of the most consummate statesmen in her service’. Yet despite such praise Michiel still argued that because Mary was ‘of a sex which cannot becomingly take more than a moderate part’ in administrative affairs, she must have therefore taken a more passive role in government. The ambassador’s claims show us the prejudice that Mary as a female ruler encountered throughout her reign, problems which Richards explores exceptionally well in this work.


Richard’s biography is superb in analysing the subject of female rule in the sixteenth-century and in the context of the reign of Mary Tudor. Previous work on English female rule has focused almost predominately on Elizabeth I. Yet as Richards identifies, Mary preceded Elizabeth and successful met challenges including attempting to curb the power of her consort, Philip of Spain. Richards effectively pushes aside the traditional notion of a weak-willed Mary who was under her husband’s thumb. Instead Mary appears as a ruler who was very wary of others encroaching upon her authority.


Aside from the useful discussions on queenship, there is also a revised and in-depth analysis of Mary’s faith and religious policies. Richards rejects the notion that Mary was the blindly devoted Catholic of Protestant myth. Instead Mary actually encountered problems with the papacy and ultimately defied the pope by refusing to send Cardinal Reginald Pole back to Rome so he may be tried on charges of heresy. As Richards notes, ‘her obedience to the Holy Father was always tempted by a strong sense of the proper limitations of papal authority within her kingdom’ (p.218). Overall subtle comparisons between Mary and her father Henry VIII, are made. It has never been popular to consider that the pair had much in common, particularly in regards to religion. But as Richards shows, Mary was also favourable to the English Bible having encouraged the preparation of another during her reign. She also agreed with the Henrician settlement on certain points; for example she and Henry were in agreement on the subject of clerical celibacy and the absolute necessity of recognising the real presence at the mass. And of course both conflicted with the papacy, albeit in varying degrees.


Mary’s relationship with France is covered well, and Richards presents the image of a queen who faced a rather hostile and often unreasonable French monarch. Richards implies that part of Henri II’s disdain was over Mary’s sex, reinforcing further the tribulations Mary faced as a queen regnant. Richards also argues that when England did go to war with the French, something historians have attacked as absolutely disastrous, there was a significant degree of support in England for the move. The biography also illustrates the alleged and genuine frustrations the English government had with the French prior to the declaration of war that indicates that decision to enter conflict was not solely or even mainly to do with support for the Hapsburgs.


However the biography is not without faults. I would have liked a larger section on the Marian persecutions as owing to its controversy and the fact that for many it has defined Mary and her reign, it is therefore a subject that needs much analysis. But perhaps Richards was making a point with the fact that only ten pages in her book are specifically dedicated to this. Her use of comparisons, between Mary’s reign and the rest of Catholic Europe (and Protestant Europe), and with the reign of Elizabeth I, was very useful. Arguably she could have gone further in such comparisons in her general argument that the Marian burnings were not incredibly unique. Overall Richards clearly indicates Mary’s role in the burnings and reveals an image of a queen who was actively involved in the policies of her reign. I think this is important to assert as Mary is a figure that can be liable to (and has actually been) represented in an extremely malicious or even very saintly fashion, both such views being gross exaggerations. Instead, as Richards shows us, she was an active sixteenth-century monarch like her father and her sister and just as we must recognise her participation in the successes of her reign, so we must identify her role in the actions which we are repulsed by.


In her own review of this book, Dr Lucy Wooding argued that more detail could have been included on the last three years of Mary’s reign. This is a valid point as some things are skipped over. If I am not mistaken Richards failed to mention the formation of the Muscovy Company in 1555, which marked significant trade links between England and Russia. Overall Ireland and Wales are rarely (if ever in regards to the latter) mentioned in this work.


Despite these criticisms, Judith Richards work on Mary is an engrossing, innovative study which has enriched scholarship on this period and will be extremely useful for historians and students of this era. It is a shame that this book has not received much publicity, whilst another and less superior recent biography on Mary has. This book, though useful for academics, is also accessible for those who know little about Mary and her reign and want a well written and fascinating biography. It lacks the syrupy sentimental language of popular history books, yet still provides us with excellent detail about Mary’s private life and character as well as the politics of her reign.

Mary's Coronation. Part 2 - Ceremony

In a previous post
I looked at Mary’s image throughout her coronation procession. This post will examine her coronation ceremony, which was the first for a queen regnant in England. By looking at the ceremony we can uncover the messages Mary was trying to promote, namely how she gave the populace an indication of her future policies.


Mary’s coronation was recorded in the Chronicle of Queen Jane and of Two Years of Queen Mary, and especially of the Rebellion of Sir Thomas Wyat. It occurred on ‘the first daie of October, 1553’, the day after her procession through London. According to the account:

"..she cam first by water to the old palice [1] and ther tarryed tyll about xi of the clocke, and then went to the churche on foot apon blew cloth being rayled on every syde..."

As mentioned in the previous post on Mary’s image, there was some disagreement amongst contemporary commentators about how Mary was dressed in the coronation procession. Interestingly on the day itself there was no confusion. She wore a ‘chrymesyn vellvert gown’ with a crown on her head, whilst her hair was left loose. The colour of the gown was significant and the fact that contemporaries noted it precisely indicates its importance. Mary had chosen to dress in a colour worn by the male monarch at his coronation instead of adopting white and gold, colours which the queen consort traditionally wore when she was crowned. Yet Mary was not a queen consort nor did she wish to present herself as such. She was a monarch in her own right and to illustrate her authority she chose to be crowned like a king. It is important to remember that Mary had no precedent to tell her how an English queen regnant was to be crowned, thus she was forming her own standard. She was stating that despite her sex she would govern with the same authority as her male predecessors. There was another reason behind her attempts to emphasis her power. Technically Mary had inherited the throne as a royal bastard; her father had illegitimated her and whilst he had provided her with a place within his succession and her right to govern was supported by the overwhelming majority, she was still not considered under law to be Henry VIII’s legitimate child. The accession of an illegitimate individual, even one whose right to succeed had been confirmed by parliament, was rather unprecedented [2]. Whilst she had received support she understood that her illegitimate state could be used against her – in fact it had been used against her by her brother and Jane Grey’s supporters. Mary rectified this by passing a parliamentary bill that stated her parents had been legally married. But this occurred after her coronation so Mary was to be crowned whilst illegitimate, something which she personally regarded as unjust. Therefore her attempts to enforce her authority were in defiance to her father’s judgement, her brother’s judgment and also those who had sided with Jane Grey. And it was also an indication of the decision on her parents’ marriage that she knew parliament would shortly reach.

No image of Mary from her coronation survives although in this Great Seal of Mary I and Philip of Spain, 1554, she is depicted with her hair lose, in official robes, wearing a crown, touching the orb and with the sceptre in her hand. This gives us some idea of the way she looked at her coronation.

Mary was determined to be crowned ‘according to the olde custome’ as opposed to the manner in which the Protestant Edward VI had been crowned. According to the Imperial ambassador, Simon Renard, "the bishops and priests [were] in full canonical dress" which was a move away from the attack on rich clerical vestments that had occurred in the previous reign. Mary objected to being anointed with the oils used in her brother’s coronation, arguing that they had been tainted by their use in a Protestant ceremony. Thus she wrote to the bishop of Arras in Brussels for a new ‘uncontaminated’ supply of holy oil. Years later when Elizabeth I was preparing her own coronation she complained that the holy oils used for Mary were now ‘grease and smelt ill’. They may have become rather stale, or perhaps Elizabeth was taking a page out of her sister’s book and removing elements that were connected to the previous opposing regime.

I’ve noticed a rumour on the internet stating that Mary refused to sit in the coronation chair because her Protestant brother had used it for his coronation. This is false – changing the holy oil was one thing but objecting to using the chair that was used for every crowned monarch after Edward I was certainly not something she did. As stated previously, Mary was keen to emphasis her right to rule and to govern like the kings that came before her. To remove such a vital element of the coronation ceremony – sitting in King Edward’s Chair – was unthinkable.




At the start of the ceremony two noblemen led Mary to each corner of a built dais so the whole congregation could see her. The man who presided over the ceremony and crowned her was the religious conservative Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester who Mary made her Lord Chancellor. Once Mary had been shown to the congregation he stated aloud:

“Sirs, Here present is Mary, rightful and undoubted inheritrix by the Laws of God and man to the Crown and Royal Dignity of this realm of England, France and Ireland, whereupon you shall understand that this day is appointed by all the peers of this land for the consecration, injunction and coronation of the said most excellent Princess Mary; will you serve at this time and give your wills and assent to the same consecration, unction and coronation?”

To which the crowd responded "Yea, yea, yea! God save Queen Mary!"



A sermon was subsequently delivered by George Day, bishop of Chichester, who had been imprisoned in 1551 after he had refused to replace alters in churches in his diocese (and released upon Mary’s accession). His sermon called upon the populace to be obedient to their sovereign. Mary then knelt in front of the altar, pledged that she would always defend her subjects and administer justice in her lands. She then swore the oath, although there is some ambiguity about its wording. According to Anne Whitelock, Mary feared that the coronation oath would be tampered with in order to make her state that she would promise uphold the current faith in England (therefore the Protestant Church of England). Thus to the oath she added the term ‘just and licit laws’ to indicate that she would uphold those laws which she regarded as lawful. In that sense she was not bound to maintain her brother’s church and had flexibility in instituting her religious objectives.


After then prostrating herself before the high altar, she was anointed by Bishop Gardiner with the holy oils. She was then dressed in the robes of state, handed the sword, sceptre and the orbs to indicate her power, and then crowned with the crown of St Edward the Confessor. She also had a personal crown made, which may have been later used by Elizabeth. Anne Whitelock notes that this specially made crown was ‘a vast yet simple designed crown with two arches, a large fleur-de-lis and prominent crosses’ (p. 196).


There were limits to Mary’s attempts to have her coronation completely resemble a king’s. A king was supposed to have the ceremonial spurs placed upon him although this was regarded as unseemly for a queen to do, thus Mary just touched them. Then there was the question of making new Knights of the Bath. It was traditional for the monarch to create new knights at the time of the coronation and this involved a ceremony in which the naked knights would be plunged in a bath and the monarch would kiss their shoulder. But as Renard notes, “the Queen being a woman, the ceremony was performed for her by the Earl of Arundel, her Great Master of the Household”.


The whole ceremony lasted from around eleven o’clock to four o’clock that afternoon. Immediately following the ceremony she attended the sumptuous coronation banquet. Overall the day had gone off without a hitch.


However there had been a notable absence – the archbishop of Canterbury. Whilst Mary was being anointed as England’s first queen regnant, Thomas Cranmer was in the Tower having been arrested for his involvement in attempting to place Jane Grey on the throne. There was of course another reason for his imprisonment; it is notable that he was then sharing lodgings with a number of other Protestant clergymen. From Mary’s point of view it was absolutely inconceivable that she would be crowned by this man and in the end she managed to orchestrate his absence and replace him with Bishop Gardiner (who had been imprisoned himself during Edward VI’s reign). Mary was clearly stating that it was a time for ‘out with the old, in with the new’. Or perhaps more accurately, out with the new and back with the old.


Overall Mary’s coronation had been a triumph and a time for genuine celebration. Yet after the festivities finished Mary faced the difficult task of living up to the image she created for herself – that of an independent queen regnant who would govern like any man before her. She would face significant problems, even be the subject of a damning critique against female rule [3]. But by and large she made everyone know who was boss. We can hardly expect anything less of a Tudor!


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[1] A reference to Westminster Palace
[2] William I was also illegitimate and it is possible that Edward the Martyr’s parents were not married.
[3] John Knox’s infamous, The first blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regiment of women(1558), which argued that women by their nature were unfit to be authority figures, was originally written in response to the rule of Mary I.


References

Primary documents

John Gough Nichols (ed.), The Chronicle of Queen Jane, and of Two Years of Queen Mary, and especially of the Rebellion of Sir Thomas Wyat (London, 1850), pp. 27-32.
Letter from Simon Renard to Philip of Spain, 3rd October 1553, in Royall Tyler (ed.), Calendar of State Papers, Spain, Volume 11: 1553 (London, 1916), pp. 261-272.


Secondary sources

David Loades, Mary Tudor: A Life (Oxford, 1992), pp. 205-6.
Judith Richards, Mary Tudor (Oxon, 2008), pp. 137-9.
David Starkey, Elizabeth: Apprenticeship (London, 2000), p. 274.
Roy Strong, Coronation: A History of Kingship and the British Monarchy (London, 2005), pp. 192-3, 197-222.
Anna Whitelock, Mary Tudor: England’s First Queen (London, 2009), pp. 195-7.

Mary’s Coronation. Part 1 – Image

Mary’s coronation was extraordinary when we consider the problems she had faced actually getting to the throne. But there was another reason for its importance – it was the first coronation of a queen regnant in England. Whilst Matilda, daughter of Henry I, had fought unsuccessfully for the throne in the twelfth-century and Jane Grey was proclaimed queen in July 1553, neither was officially anointed as sovereign. Thus Mary was the first women in English history who was crowned queen in her own right.

This naturally raised problems. Everyone had been used to a male fulfilling this role – and the existence of a queen regnant raised a number of questions regarding the extent of her power, how much power her prospective husband should have, etc. And the coronation itself was bound to be different.

Judith Richards in her excellent article, Mary Tudor as ‘Sole Quene’?: Gendering Tudor Monarchy (1997), notes that reports regarding the coronation procession that occurred on the 30th September 1553, were mixed. The eyewitness accounts don’t add up – one contemporary noted that she wore ‘a gown of blew velvet, furred with powdered armyen’ whilst another stated that she wore a white gown and had her hair worn lose to emphasise her virginity. Others recorded that her hair was up and adorned with jewels. These disagreements may seem trivial. But Richards raises an interesting point when she notes that such differences tell us a lot about the uncertainties felt by contemporaries watching the coronation procession. They were witnessing something unseen in England – the coronation of a female ruler and it seems that no one could agree on what manner Mary should present herself. Namely, whether she should have dressed in the same colours and in the same style as a king would at his coronation procession (that is to wear blue or purple velvet), or to follow the style of the queen consort (to wear white and wear her hair loose).

So evidently the day was a puzzling as well as an exciting event. It seems that Mary did wear her hair loose – and she proceeded to have herself depicted as such in the first plea roll portrait of her (dated Michaelmas, 1533):








(Another example of Mary wearing her hair lose - a golden rial dating to c.1553/1554)



The coronation celebrations lasted over several days. On the 28th September 1553 Mary moved to the Tower (where the monarch traditionally resided before their coronation). She travelled there in a decorative barge accompanied by her sister, Elizabeth, and there was music and the sound of cannons firing to salute her. The following day she created 15 new Knights of the Bath, including the young earl of Surrey (later Thomas Howard, 4th duke of Norfolk) and William Courtenay, Earl of Devon who was a proposed marriage candidate for Mary. A number of these men were loyal allies, including William Dormer who was father to one of Mary’s most trusted ladies – Jane Dormer. Importantly, a number were religious conservatives (like Dormer). Clearly Mary was providing a taste of what was soon to come.

The 30th September marked the day of the coronation procession which started around two o’clock that afternoon. As Freda Winifred described, it ‘passed by way of Fenchurch, Gracechurch, Cornhill, Cheapside, St. Paul’s Churchyard, Ludgate and Fleet Street to Whitehall Palace’. Travelling with Mary was Elizabeth and her one time stepmother, Anne of Cleves, emphasising family solidarity. The procession was a time when the public could show their acclaim for their new monarch and throughout the procession Mary would have been greeted with fantastic displays, including some set up by various groups of merchants of the city. This included the Florentines who staged a display which compared Mary to Judith who triumphed over Holofernes (who was meant to represent the duke of Northumberland in this demonstration).

Throughout the procession Mary displayed herself as the queen consort would at a coronation, which indicates that she understood the similarities between her role and a consort’s – namely that she was a wife of sorts although in this case not to a monarch but to her country. The idea of a queen regnant wedded to her realm instantly provokes the image of Elizabeth I who famously declared that she had entered such a marriage. But despite Mary’s later decision to marry, she too believed that she had entered into an important union with her country and one which could not be affected by a temporal marriage:


“I am already married to this Common Weal and the faithful members of the same, the spousal ring whereof I have on my finger [the coronation ring]...”

(Mary’s speech in the Guildhall, 31st January 1554 recorded in John Protector, The History of Wyat’s Rebellion: With the Order and Manner of Resisting the Same (London, 1554))


Thus Mary, even as early as her coronation, was attempting to compromise the role of queen regnant with the well known one of queen consort. But unlike the consort whose role was reliant on her husband, Mary was determined to emphasise her own authority and how it was not aligned with another. And this can be found in the coronation ceremony itself when Mary managed to secure a Catholic ceremony for herself despite the fact that the country she inherited was, officially at least, separated from the Catholic Church and that her archbishop of Canterbury was one of the most notable and dedicated advocates of religious reform in the country...





References

Judith Richards, Mary Tudor (London, 2008), pp. 134-39.

Judith Richards, ‘Mary Tudor as ‘Sole Quene’?: Gendering Tudor Monarchy’, The Historical Journal, 40, 4 (1997).

Winifred Roll, Mary I: The History of the Unhappy Tudor Queen (New Jersey, 1980), pp. 130-34.

J.M. Stone, The History of Mary I Queen of England: As found in the public records, despatches of ambassadors in original private letters, and other contemporary documents (London, 1901), pp. 255-56.