THE NETHERLANDS AND THE ANGLO-PAPAL RECONCILIATION OF 1554

by Dr. D. M. LOADES Durham

Mary Tudor's marriage to Philip of Spain has had a remarkably bad press, even from those most sympathetic to the Queen and her policies. Contemporary Englishmen, including such loyal familiars as Sir Robert Rochester, regarded it with suspicion or strong dislike'. Contemporary Spaniards were horrified at the thought of their much-loved prince marry- ing, and even living, in a remote land of barbarous heretics. Subsequent English and American historians have tended to regard it as a folly arising out of the Queen's total failure to understand the national aspirations of her subjects, and Spanish historians have tended to dismiss it as an un- typical aberration of 'el rey prudente'2. This remarkable unanimity of judgement has, I think, arisen from two facts. First, that the marriage is universally deemed to have failed because no children were born of it, and Mary was consequently succeeded by her protestant half-sister. Second, that it was widely seen at the time, and has been consistently seen since, in the light of the particularist interests of England or Spain. However, none of those most intimately concerned in initiating the project viewed it in that way, and it is high time that the policies which the marriage represented were re-examined. The seeds had been sown many years before, in the friendship and pro- tection which Charles V had first extended to Mary through his am- bassador in England, Eustace Chapuys. During the traumatic progress of Henry VIII's 'Great Matter' both Catherine and Mary depended heavily upon Chapuys, and although he was able to offer them little but words, their gratitude had none the less been great3. After her mother's death in January 1536, Mary had been driven to seek her cousin's protection on

1 Rochester, the Controllerof the Household,was the longestserving and most intimate of Mary's English advisers. For a discussionof his oppositionto the marriage, see E. H. Harbison, RivalAmbassadors at the Courtof QueenMary, 77. 2 Notably Harbison and A. F. Pollard, ThePolitical history of England fromtheaccession of Ed- ward VI to thedeath of Elizabeth.For a recent expressionof the traditional Spanish view, see Ramón Menéndez Pidal, Españaen el tiempode FelipeII. 3 Chapuys to the Emperor, 15 September1533. Letters and Papers of the Reign of HenryVIII, VI, 1125. 40 two subsequent occasions. During the first crisis, in the summer of 1536, Chapuys had proved an ineffectual shield, but had succeeded in doing something to assuage the princess's guilty conscience'. During the second crisis, in 1550 and 1551, the Emperor had been in a better position to pro- tect her, and thanks to his diplomatic support she had continued to enjoy the consolations of her faith in defiance of the Duke of Northumberland5. By the time that she came to the throne, therefore, Mary had long been ac- customed to look to the Emperor, and to his successive agents in England, particularly Chapuys and Van der Delft, for advice and protection. She had also declared that, should it ever be her fortune to marry, she would only do so with her cousin's consent. The honorific embassy which Charles sent to England in late June 1553, ostensibly to commiserate with Edward VI upon his serious illness, was thus in reality designed to seek ad- vantage in the king's incipient death6. The Emperor did not, of course, know whether Mary would succeed in making good her claim or not, and he was not prepared to take the risk of open intervention. Should she fail, his representatives were instructed to make friends with the new govern- ment as best they could, pledging his recognition and offering alliance against France. Should she succeed, on the other hand, they were to pro- ceed immediately to consider the question of her marriage. So long as the issue lay in doubt, or the security of Mary's victory was open to question, they were to insist that the Emperor preferred an English marriage, because

... if they are reassured as to our intentions they may be less accessible to the schemes of the French, and cease to dread having a foreigner, loathed, as all foreigners are by all Englishmen, for their king' 7.

However, if her position seemed strong and the political situation stable, they were discreetly to suggest some delay, in order 'to arrive at a better solution' . The nature of this 'better solution' had already been discussed between Charles and Granvelle, and probably between Granvelle and Simon Renard, before the embassy had left Brussels. The Emperor was deter- mined if possible to secure this matrimonial prize for his son and heir Philip, the Prince of Spain, and his motives for so doing were much more

4 Chapuys to the Emperor, 1 July 1536.L andP, XI, 7. 5 W. K. Jordan, EdwardVI: thethreshold of power,256-265. 6 The Emperor's instructionsto MM De Courrières,De Thoulouse,and Simon Renard, 23 June 1553. Calendarof StatePapers, Spanish, XI, 60-65. 7 Ibid., 64.