Tower by Jones Nigel

Author:Jones, Nigel [Jones, Nigel]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781409038399
Publisher: Random House UK
Published: 2011-10-12T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

FALLEN FAVOURITES

THE RELEASE FROM the Tower of Elizabeth and the Dudley brothers, along with genuine conspirators such as Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon, was less the result of the Marian government adopting a policy of mercy, than a panicky attempt to win back lost public approval, disgusted both by Mary’s Spanish marriage and by the mass incineration of Protestants. During his brief stays in England after marrying Mary, Philip of Spain steered well clear of the Tower, only briefly visiting the fortress three times, and never staying there overnight. Mary, by contrast, spent the autumn and winter of 1555–6 there, hoping against hope that her absentee husband had made her pregnant.

These hopes turned to ashes – the ashes of more than 300 Protestants burned at the stake by Mary for refusing to renounce their heresy, a policy that has irredeemably blackened her name in history. Foremost among the martyrs were Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley – who went to the flames at Oxford after ten months in the Tower. Latimer prophesied at the stake that they were lighting a Protestant flame in England that would not be extinguished. Scores of ordinary men and women suffered similarly for the ‘crime’ of refusing to conform to the new Catholic orthodoxy. Mary’s bitter cruelty was fuelled by her failure to become pregnant – despite numerous wish-induced false alarms – and by her growing realisation that her husband was merely using her and her kingdom as an instrument of Spanish foreign policy. Mary obediently converted Spanish silver to coins at the Tower mint; supplied the Tower’s ordnance and ships to fight Philip’s campaigns against France; and filled her court with Spanish priests and monks. Her only reward was to lose Calais – England’s sole remaining possession in France – causing her famous lament that after her death the word ‘Calais’ would be found carved on her heart.

That death, in November 1558 – followed within hours by that of her chief spiritual adviser Cardinal Reginald Pole – was caused by uterine cancer, which Mary, pathetically, had mistaken for pregnancy. The news of her half-sister’s demise and her succession was brought to Elizabeth at Hatfield House, just north of London. Any sorrow at her sibling’s passing was short-lived, and a grateful nation joined in frantic rejoicing that a new ruler was on the throne with the promise of a future un-brightened by flames consuming human flesh.

Elizabeth arrived at the Tower on 28 November, after negotiating her way through London streets thronged with crowds cheering themselves hoarse. It was a very different entry from her last stay in the fortress. Although she knew that she would have to go through the formal coronation ceremonies at the Tower as custom and tradition dictated, Elizabeth – for very understandable reasons – was not anxious to prolong her time in the prison-palace that stood in her mind only for suffering, danger and death. Elizabeth’s long reign, in fact, marks a defining watershed in the Tower’s history – when its royal

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