The Counter-Reformation of Mary I

By Samantha Wilcoxson

Queen Mary I
Portrait by Eworth

Queen Mary I does not enjoy the popularity of her sister or the entertainment value of her father. Her relatively short reign was spent striving toward a goal that few of us understand today. The modern worldview that firmly separates church and state makes it difficult to comprehend how responsible Queen Mary felt for her subjects' salvation and how passionately she believed she was doing the right thing with her attempt at counter-reformation in England.

We look back with the benefit of almost 500 years of hindsight and wonder how Mary failed to realize that her plans to return England to Catholicism after her father's break from Rome twenty years earlier were doomed. The fact that Protestantism flourished after Mary's death indicates to us that Mary should have seen the signs that it was coming or that she should have taken a dose of modern tolerance and embraced her subjects' differences, but to promote either of these ideas is to fail to fully understand the mindset of a 16th century monarch.

As Eamon Duffy states in his Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor, "No sixteenth-century European state willingly accepted or could easily imagine the peaceful coexistence of differing religious confessions." Even Mary's sister, Elizabeth, who would later claim "no desire to make windows into men's souls" was scarcely less active in her persecution of Catholics. In Mary's time, the idea that faith was separate from law or that varying beliefs could thrive within one geographic area was not the progressive thought we believe it to be but something between heresy and treason.

Mary I's Entrance into London
Oil Painting by Shaw

Mary did not go into her reign believing counter-reformation would fail but that she was obligated to give it her best shot. Quite the contrary. When the common people helped secure her crown, which they knew meant a return to the Catholic mass, Mary was certain that most of her subjects shared her ambitions. Not only did she have vast popular support, but she had her cousin, Cardinal Reginald Pole. He had almost been elected to the papacy in 1550, and with his support England's smooth transition to the 'true faith' seemed assured.

During Mary's first Parliament, the marriage of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon was deemed valid, erasing Mary's illegitimacy if not the scars left from that difficult period of her life. Her brother Edward's religious reforms were also overturned, allowing Mary to reasonably believe the changes she planned to make would occur quickly and easily.

Pole published sermons to be used throughout Mary's kingdom in an effort to reach those too young to remember the old faith that they might embrace it. However, they soon realized that reformed teaching was being perpetrated at some of the highest levels in the church. Heresy is a charge that does not make sense to the modern mind but was more serious than we can imagine in the 16th century. To secure the salvation of her subjects, Mary believed that it was necessary to outlaw Protestant books and teaching. When some reformers resisted, the burnings began.

Procession into St Mary's
Engraving by Myers

The 284 people burned for heresy during the reign of Queen Mary is what she is chiefly remembered for. The most notable, historical figures such as Latimer, Ridley, and Cranmer, did go to the stake with Mary's consent, but many of the other, more controversial convictions occurred under the supervision of local law enforcement who sometimes allowed charges of heresy to be used more to settle scores than root out false teaching. Burning heretics was meant to give them a foretaste of hell in the hope that they would recant and be saved for eternity. Better to suffer a finite time on Earth than forever in hell. However, Mary and her counter-reformers were surprised to find that a shocking number of convicted Protestants held firm to their beliefs, becoming witnesses to their faith rather than examples of recantation.

In the meantime, Mary made what was possibly her most serious mistake. Instead of choosing an eligible Englishman, such as Edward Courtenay or even Reginald Pole, as a husband, Mary fell in love with Prince Philip of Spain. Fear that this would make England a vassal of Spain or the Holy Roman Empire, which Philip's father ruled, caused rebellions and distrust of Mary's queenship much more than her return to Catholicism had. When the two fused into one surge of disillusionment with Mary's reign, the objectives that had seemed within reach fell away from England's first queen regnant.

Illuminated Manuscript of
Mary blessing cramp rings

During her five year reign, Mary suffered two false pregnancies, likely caused by uterine cancer. The marriage that she fought so hard for proved loveless and childless. Finally, her devotion to her people and her faith failed to be enough to see England restored to Rome and what she considered the 'true faith.' She died knowing that Elizabeth, the sister she did not trust but had little choice but to name as her heir, would reverse all of her efforts. Little did she know how stridently that sister would also work to blacken her name in order that the name of Elizabeth I would shine more gloriously.

The auspicious beginning of Mary's reign and the outpouring of love from her subjects would have helped heal the wounds left from a difficult life at the hands of her father and given her hope for the future. However, Mary could not see as clearly as we see today that successful counter-reformation in England was not what God had in mind for her after all.


Additional Reading
Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor by Eamon Duffy
The First Queen of England by Linda Porter


All images in the public domain through Wikimedia Commons

~~~~~~~~~~

Samantha Wilcoxson is the author of the Plantagenet Embers series featuring women of the Wars of the Roses and Tudor England.

An incurable bibliophile and sufferer of wanderlust, Samantha lives in Michigan with her husband and three teenagers. You can connect with her on her blog or on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Goodreads.

The Reformation: Henry & Luther

By Samantha Wilcoxson

Martin Luther and the 95 Theses
by Ferdinand Pauwels, 1872

On October 31, 1517, a monk named Martin Luther nailed his 'Disputation on the Power of Indulgences' to the door of Castle Church in the village of Wittenberg, Germany. He had no way of knowing that his desire to discuss and debate the Catholic Church practice would cause his name to go down in history. Five hundred years later, Luther's name is boldly emblazoned upon the facades of thousands of churches, and his call for discussion is better known as the 95 Theses.

Some historians have questioned whether Luther really posted his comments on the eve of All Saint's Day, wondering if the meaningful date is correct or whether it is a task that the professor of theology would have carried out himself. However, the events and changes that resulted from Luther's actions and writings cannot be denied, even if the theses nailing to the church door may be myth posing as history. Thanks to the boldness of one German monk and the innovation of the printing press, what it meant to be a Christian changed across Europe.

Because of the Gutenberg printing press, Luther's ideas did not remain quietly within the village of Wittenberg. They were translated from Latin into German, and eventually other languages, and spread like wildfire. Unlike reformers of the past, who were often limited by their own geography, Luther became a voice against the corruption of the Catholic Church far beyond his little corner of the world. By the following year, Luther was charged with heresy and had to return from his hearing in Augsburg under the protection of Friedrich III of Saxony.

Martin Luther's
On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church

In England, Luther's ideas were countered by the king himself. Henry VIII wrote his 'Defense of the Seven Sacraments' in response to Luther's treatise, 'On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church.' It was this work of Luther's more than the 95 Theses that outlined his grievances against the Catholic Church. (Some historians question whether the work in Henry's 'Defense' can be completely attributed to him, but we shall assume here that it can.) In 1521, Martin Luther was excommunicated while Henry was awarded by the Pope with the title of Defender of the Faith.

Excommunication did not slow Luther down. He translated the Bible into German (helping define and unite the common German language), attended the Diet of Worms where he made his famous 'I neither can nor will recant' statement, and got into a bit of an argument with the King of England.

The 'little monk,' as Henry had called him in his 'Defense' did not hesitate to respond to his detractor. Luther was perhaps the first to publicly question Henry's authorship of the treatise, claiming that it should not be taken seriously for the king did not even write it. Soon afterward, Luther apologized for the accusation and attacked Wolsey, 'the scourge of thy kingdom,' instead. This, of course, did not earn Henry's forgiveness, but only spurred him to defend the minister he depended upon so heavily at that time.

Henry VIII's
Defense of the Seven Sacraments

In typical Henry VIII style, the king used Luther's accusation later when he wished to dissolve his marriage with Katherine of Aragon. Claiming that it was Wolsey's hand behind his defense of the sacrament of marriage, Henry appealed for support. Luther, who in his booklet 'Against Henry, King of the English' had been open-handed with insults for the king, gave his support to the devoutly Catholic Katherine. Among other choice words, Luther accused the king of being 'a fool,' 'effeminately querulous,' and 'stupid.'

Henry began as a staunch supporter of the Catholic Church while Luther hoped to reform it. Despite their original intentions, it was Henry who broke with Rome while Protestants took up Luther's name to apply it to their own movement. These two men's motivations were completely different, although they led to the same result. Henry began the Church of England to exert his own authority over that of the pope, while Luther had not intended to start his own church but to correct the corruption in Rome.

Both men took their important places in Reformation history, though neither began with the goal of separating from Rome. With the benefit of 500 years of hindsight, we can see how each of these men helped lead the Protestant movement. Henry set the stage for reformation in England, despite the fact that his faith was Catholic in all tenets besides papal authority, with his 1534 Act of Supremacy. Once the break had been made, it was easy for his son, Edward VI, or advisors acting with his authority, to usher in full Protestantism.

Henry VIII and the Barber Surgeons
by Hans Holbein the Younger

Luther agreed with Henry that the Pope was not the highest or an infallible authority. However, while Henry wished to place himself above all others, Luther preached that the Bible alone - sola scriptura - could offer the authority of God. They would have also agreed upon the true presence of Jesus' body and blood in the sacramental bread and wine. Henry had subjects punished for denying transubstantiation, and it was a point that Luther refused to budge on despite the urging of other reformists. Christians today remain divided on the topic.
These two giants of the early 16th century died less than a year apart, Martin Luther on February 18, 1546, and Henry on January 28, 1547. One can only imagine what they would think of the impact that their ideas and actions continue to have on our society 500 years later.

Additional Reading
Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet by Lyndal Roper
Various writings of Henry VIII and Martin Luther


All images in the public domain through Wikimedia Commons
~~~~~~~~~~

Samantha Wilcoxson is the author of the Plantagenet Embers series featuring women of the Wars of the Roses and Tudor England.

An incurable bibliophile and sufferer of wanderlust, Samantha lives in Michigan with her husband and three teenagers. You can connect with her on her blog or on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Goodreads.

The Long-term Consequences of a Failed Scottish Marriage

by Anna Belfrage

These days we’ve grown quite accustomed to the fact that if a marriage doesn't work, we can simply get a divorce. No big deal, in this modern world of ours, and unhappy couples separate legally and are free to find happiness elsewhere. Happiness, of course, is just as elusive now as it always has been, but at least the modern man and woman can attempt to try anew.

Not so the people of the past – or so we believe. Once married, they were permanently tied to each other, their union impossible to break. But in reality, things weren't all that different in the past to how they are now: people with money and clout could always wiggle themselves out of uncomfortable situations – such as an unhappy marriage.

Back then, most of the people with money and clout were men, so it follows it was the wife who was put aside, either because her spouse discovered they were more closely related than he had known, thereby falling within the forbidden circle that required Papal dispensation (how convenient), or through assorted creative methods, one of which was forcing the wife to take the veil.
However, divorce before the 20th century was rare. Very rare. Consanguinity, pre-contract or lack of consent were essentially the only acceptable grounds. So most married couples did, in fact, live together until parted by death. Once again, quite often the wife was the one who did the departing, mainly due to the strains of childbirth.

A marriage that worked?
James V and Marie de Guise

From our advantage of hindsight, we can shake our heads and shudder at the barbarity of arranged marriages, and there is no doubt that now and then these marriages were horribly unhappy, but just as often they were not. One must remember that the men and women of the previous centuries (except for the latest one) did not necessarily expect to be happy. They aimed for content and safe, settled for someone who would help them raise their children, someone who somehow added to their families’ overall standing and fortune.

In England, acquiring a divorce remained a messy thing well into the 20th century. The accepted grounds for divorce were essentially adultery, but further to that, a spouse had to prove cruelty and abuse of some kind or another to be free of the philandering partner. In Scotland, however, things had been much, much easier since back in the 16th century. Personally, I think John Knox deserves a pat on the back for this – but then I am quite ambivalent to this fascinating man, on the one hand vilifying female rulers in his tract “First Blast of the Trumpet”, on the other a man who clearly enjoyed the company of women – and respected them.

So what did Scotland do back in the 16th century? Well, they decided to allow divorce, that’s what those savvy Scots did. Furthermore, the issue of divorce was transferred out of the ecclesiastic courts to be handled by lawmen rather than priests – which makes a lot of sense when one considers that most marriages at the time were contractual arrangements that involved property moving hands. (This is not to say the powerful Scottish Kirk did not keep a beady eye on proceedings – it most certainly did!) However, divorce was still a last remedy, and was essentially only granted for two reasons, one of which was adultery.

These Scots were progressive types, very much into gender equality (well…) How else to explain their decision that both men and women could demand a divorce on account of adultery – quite unheard of in a world where a man’s indiscretions were just that – indiscretions – while a woman’s adventures with another man than her husband were a sin, a grievous, grievous sin, very much in keeping with the female lack of morality and propensity for uncontrolled lust.

Interestingly enough, no law was ever passed confirming the right to divorce due to adultery. Instead, it was assumed that the prohibition against divorce on account of adultery went out of the window together with the allegiance to the Pope, and a decade or so later, divorce due to adultery was an established common law practise.

A rousing Reformation sermon with John Knox

Had the Scots left it at that – divorce on account of adultery – it would have been an improvement, but maybe not a major improvement. However, due to the antics of two people with that intoxicating combination of money and clout, Scottish divorce legislation came to recognise another reason for divorce, namely desertion by either party. This had the benefit of being much easier to arrange – and prove – plus it did not tar one of the parties as being an unfaithful git. But let me introduce you to the main protagonists in all this, namely the Earl of Argyll – Archibald Campbell – and Lady Jean Stewart, one of James V’s many by-blows.

Little Jean might have been born out of wedlock, but her royal father was well-practised in handling such sensitive issues and in general took good care of his offspring. On her mother’s side, she was related to the Beatons – a powerful family which counts among its more (in)famous members Cardinal David Beaton. He was the Archbishop of St Andrews who instigated the trial and execution by burning of religious reformer George Wishart, and who some time afterwards was assassinated by William Kirkcaldy and a couple of aggravated Leslies. Beaton’s body was hanged from the window of his castle for everyone to see, and in many ways his handling of Wishart was the fuel that led to the roaring bonfire that was the Scottish reformation.

Enough about David Beaton (a man who deserves his own post, what with his relaxed attitude to celibacy, his constant focus on Number One – this being Davie, not Our Lord – and his strong Catholic and political convictions). Suffice it to say that little Jean was of good lineage on both sides, no matter what side of the blanket she was born on.

Archibald was no royal bastard, but his family was wealthy and among the most powerful in Scotland. Very early on, our Archie became an ardent Protestant. During the long regency that followed James V’s death, he, together with James Stewart – yet another of James V’s bastards, later to be Earl of Moray – became a vociferous opponent to Marie de Guise and her pro-French policies, fearing that the little Queen’s mother had every intention of keeping Scotland a loyal member of the Holy Roman Church. Probably a correct assumption, but Argyll’s decision to seek help and support from the English was not to endear him overmuch to his countrymen.

Jean was very fond of Marie de Guise. The Queen Mother treated her husband’s bastards with kindness, and she was very protective of Jean, the young queen’s only sister. Jean was raised at court and became one of Marie’s most trusted maids, living in close familiarity with the beleaguered regent.

Marie de Guise

Archie and Jean were married in 1553. Maybe they disliked each other on sight. Maybe their differing opinions on matters religious drove an immediate wedge between the young spouses, at the time still in their teens. Whatever the case, the marriage very quickly deteriorated, with Archie living openly with various mistresses, fathering a number of illegitimate children while Jean remained childless. And things were definitely not helped when Archie became a prominent member of the Lords of Congregation, the Protestant faction that led the rebellion that resulted in the Scottish reformation in 1560. Jean couldn’t forgive her husband for siding against her beloved Marie de Guise.

Jean decided to get her own back by taking a lover. The Campbell clan roared in anger at this dishonour to their chief, and Jean was effectively held prisoner. Through the efforts of her – and Archie’s – extended family, the couple achieved some sort of reconciliation in 1561, very much at the hands of John Knox, who seems to have had quite the vested interest in this couple’s marriage.

A very young Mary, Queen of Scots

In 1561, Mary Queen of Scots returned to Scotland from France, and Jean quickly became a favoured lady-in-waiting while her husband was one of the Queen’s chief political advisors. This didn’t help the marriage. Things went from bad to worse, one could say, with Jean complaining to the Queen, who was quite torn between her loyalties to her sister, and her dependency on the Earl of Argyll to maintain peace in her realm.

John Knox and Queen Mary -
not seeing eye to eye

In 1563 the Queen decided to rope in some help in attempting to heal the breach between Archie and Jean. She contacted John Knox. Picture this scene for a moment: The devout Catholic queen turns to her foremost adversary when it comes to matters of faith and asks for a tete-a-tete. In a low, concerned voice, she expresses that something must be done to save the fragile thing that is Jean’s marriage. John Knox agreed, and in 1563, the Queen and the Reformer had a number of sessions with Jean and Archie - you know, a very early version of present day marriage counsellors. Ultimately, it didn't help – but it was nice that they tried!

Archie was becoming desperate. He needed an heir, and whether it was because Jean refused him access to her bed (in itself no mean feat in the 16th century) or because she was barren, so far there had been no reconciling patter of little feet. Plus, the two spouses obviously hated each other’s guts. So Archie offered Jean a settlement if she would agree to a divorce on the grounds of adultery, with him taking the blame. She refused – as the so called injured party she could.

The Queen was deposed, the realm was in upheaval, and in all this chaos Jean took the opportunity of fleeing for ever from her husband’s tender care. In 1567 she ran away from him, and the couple’s very public separation forced the Scottish Kirk to attempt to deal with it. Archie needed a full divorce, not a separation. He wanted to be free to wed again and beget children. Jean had no intention of making anything easy for him, and so the Kirk’s leaders – such as John Knox – sucked in their lips and mulled this little conundrum over.

Earl of Moray

In 1573, the Earl of Argyll succeeded in having the Scottish Parliament pass an Act that allowed divorce on the grounds of desertion. This time, when he pushed Jean for a divorce, she didn't protest. Her position was far too shaky at present with her sister imprisoned by the English and her brother, the powerful Earl of Moray, busy with other matters. And so, in August of 1573, Archibald Campbell became a free man again, hastening to re-marry. Unfortunately for him, six weeks later he was dead… Unfortunately for his hapless widow, Jean decided the time was ripe to protest the divorce, insisting she had been forced.

After endless squabbles, a final settlement was made some years later. Jean retained the title of Countess of Argyll (very important to her, apparently), received a generous lump sum and retired to live out the rest of her life at her Canongate residence in Edinburgh, busying herself with her famous button collection. I’m thinking she laughed all the way to the bank, our Jean – or maybe she didn't. Maybe now and then she felt genuine regret for what could have been a marriage and never rose above a constant bloody strife.

The legal outcome of all this was that in 1573, Scotland implemented an Act that allowed for spouses to be divorced, assuming they could prove desertion by the other. Suddenly, all those unhappy marriages had a “get out of jail” card. Not a bad thing, all in all, even if divorce continued to be rare in the following centuries. A failed marriage was a stigma – especially for the woman, who, as we all know, probably was to blame for its failure to begin with. After all, either she was a nag, or she was barren or, worst of all, she was a lewd and immoral creature, far too tempted by carnal sin, as demonstrated by Eve when she yanked that apple off the branch!

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This is an Editor's Choice and originally published on September 24, 2014

Had Anna Belfrage been allowed to choose, she’d have become a professional time-traveller. As such a profession does not exist, she became a financial professional with two absorbing interests, namely history and writing. 

Presently, Anna is hard at work with The King’s Greatest Enemy, a series set in the 1320s featuring Adam de Guirande, his wife Kit, and their adventures and misfortunes in connection with Roger Mortimer’s rise to power. And yes, Hugh Despenser plays a central role.The first book, In The Shadow of the Storm was published in 2015, the second, Days of Sun and Glory, was published in July 2016.

When Anna is not stuck in the 14th century, she's probably visiting in the 17th century, specifically with Alex and Matthew Graham, the protagonists of the acclaimed The Graham Saga. This is the story of two people who should never have met – not when she was born three centuries after him.

More about Anna on her website or on her blog!

The Politics of the Kirkyard ~ James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton

By Linda Root

Photo by the author, 07/03/2016-Greyfriars 

History has not been kind to James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton. Nowhere is his indictment more apparent than at Greyfriars Kirkyard. Other controversial characters in the Scottish Reformation are revered there and at nearby Saint Giles, but not James Douglas, who ruled Scotland from 1572 until 1580, first as de facto regent, then as Regent, and later as the power presiding over the Privy Council. None of it came easily. He withstood challenges from the Presbyterian Council of the Kirk, from Scotland's great northern Catholic Houses, and eventually from an increasingly rebellious adolescent king. However, in the final analysis, Morton was usurped by the young king’s colorful favorite Esme Stuart, who stole the sovereign's heart while Morton was busy running the country. Morton should have seen it coming, but he had encouraged the correspondence between his sovereign and the French aristocrat. It kept young James Charles Stuart out of his hair.

On the other end of the spectrum, Queen Marie Stuart’s erstwhile friend and later, relentless critic, George Buchanan, is honored twice at competing gravesites within the kirkyard, each claiming to be the site where the scholar was buried when his original headstone sank into the mire. He is lauded in the interior of the beautiful Greyfriars Church with its well-known tryptic Buchanan stained glass window said to be the first art glass to be approved for installation in a post- Reformation Scottish church. Construction of the present building began in the early years of the 17th century at the site of an old Franciscan monastery, on land allegedly rededicated to the Kirk by the Queen of Scots. The cemetery thus predates the present church. 

George Buchanan: Wikimedia Commons

In spite of his harsh treatment of his royal pupil, James VI, and his betrayal of the queen who had considered him a trusted adviser, Buchanan is rehabilitated in mixed media splendor, but not his cohort Morton. Perhaps the difference is Morton's liberal hypothecation of clerical assets, diverted to finance the king's household, and his efforts to Anglicize the Scottish Kirk. Buchanan, on the other hand, resisted any move toward an English style episcopacy. He also attempted, albeit unsuccessfully, to bend the young king to his philosophy that the ultimate power to rule was in the hands of the people, a position he expressed in writings banned during the politically volatile latter 17th Century. His treatise on the topic of the source of royal power was the star attraction at an Oxford Book Burning.

The principal difference in the legacies left by the two men who controlled the character development of King James VI and I is the public perception of Buchanan as an Erasmine intellectual and Morton’s as an overreaching politician. Neither of them, however, enjoy the popularity of Greyfriars best-known resident, the small black dog known to the world far outside Scotland as Greyfriar’s Bobby, who has become an international icon of love and loyalty, virtues not shared by either of the men who shared his burial grounds. A comparison of the little dog’s grave marker with that of the Earl of Morton illustrates the point.

Photo by the author

For those who are not Marian scholars, after the abdication of the Queen of Scots in 1567 following an armed but bloodless confrontation with the Lords of the Congregation at Carberry Hill and her imprisonment at the Douglas enclave at Lock Leven, the government of Scotland fell into the hands of a series of regents for the infant king, the first being the Queen’s half-brother James Stewart, Earl of Murray (Moray). He was assassinated by a member of the Catholic House of Hamilton in 1570 and succeeded by the king's paternal grandfather, Matthew Stewart, Earl of Lennox, a charming but ineffectual Anglophile, married to the Tudor princess, Lady Margaret Douglas. During Lennox’s Regency and the brief term of the Earl of Mar, the day to day management of government fell to the highly capable Morton, who finally achieved the title upon the death of Mar.

Forward-looking Morton’s policy centered on whatever pleased the English Queen. At the time, there was still a formidable Marian presence in Scotland, comprised of the Northern Catholic lairds, the Queen’s loyal but moderate followers like Lords Livingston and Herres, and Lord James Fleming, who held Dumbarton Castle, in addition to the great statesman Maitland of Lethington and the warrior knight, Kirkcaldy of Grange, who held Edinburgh Castle for the Queen. They were not an insignificant force, and the outcome of the power struggle called the Douglas Wars was by no means a foregone conclusion. Morton’s best chance to prevail against the Marians required support from the sovereign to the South. For example, when he accepted the Scottish Regency after the death of the king’s grandfather Lennox and the quick demise of the Earl of Mar, he wrote to Elizabeth’s minister Burleigh:

The knowledge of her Majesty's meaning has chiefly moved me to accept the charge (the Regency), resting in assured hope of her favourable protection and maintenance, especially for the present payment of our men-of-war their bypass wages. (Calendar State Papers Scotland, vol.4 (1905) p.441 no.488, some parts modernised in the Calendar, Wikipedia).

Morton was not so much an Anglophile as he was a pragmatic Scot Kirkcaldy and his faction, including the Maxwells and the Kers of Ferniehirst, were running effective raids from the safety of Edinburgh Castle. The artillery there allowed them to control the city of Edinburgh and keep the King’s Army off balance. They rode as reivers against Morton’s estate at Dalkeith and stole his sheep. Kirkcaldy fired the mighty cannon Mons Meg into the city, and shells almost reached the Regent’s headquarters in a house in The Canongate.

The Old City is still within the range of Mons Meg.

In seeking an alliance with Elizabeth, Morton was not far off the mark. His wooing of the English Queen did more that open her tightly-held purse, but resulted in her sending her siege guns to Edinburgh to bombard the Castle, and thus end the Marian Civil War. The fall of the Castle spelled the end of a Marian force in Scotland.

One would have thought Morton’s achievements would have been applauded, but his seizure of church revenues and his knocking heads with the leaders of the Scottish Kirk also made enemies. In 1577, he was ousted as Regent by eleven-year-old James VI, who in his newly proclaimed majority was being guided by men who had had enough of Morton’s iron-fisted rule. But Morton was a competent manipulator and a military tactician. Within a year he had seized Stirling Castle and reacquired custody of the king. He assumed a principal role in a coalition government. His greatest rival the Earl of Athol mysteriously died after a dinner party at which Morton was suspected of pouring the wine.

However, Morton’s new ascendancy did not last long. The sometimes morose adolescent king had been encouraged to correspond with his French cousin Esme Stuart, son of his father Lord Darnley’s naturalized French uncle. In 1579, the King invited Esme to Scotland to claim his uncle Matthew’s earldom and soon James was entirely in his thrall. What Morton might have thought a clever way to keep the king occupied and out of his hair was a fatal mistake. Esme Stuart was more than just a charming courtier. Even before he met the king, he arrived in Edinburgh and charmed the burgesses with money he had likely carried from France at the behest of the Guise uncles of the imprisoned Queen of Scots. By the time he and James VI first met, Esme already had a faction. By 1580, he had the accomplices and the power to challenge Morton.

In late 1580, through a strawman, Captain John Stewart of Ochiltree, Morton was publicly accused of being part and parcel of the king’s father Lord Darnley’s murder at Kirk o' Field in 1567. While he denied complicity, he admitted knowledge of the conspiracy. Under other circumstances, it might not have been enough, but the tides had turned against him. On June 2, 1581, the mighty Earl of Morton was beheaded by a prototype of the guillotine called the Maiden, a device he is said to have acquired during one of his visits to Elizabeth.

The Maiden 

His body was dumped in a common grave at Greyfriars, but his head was mounted on a spike at the Edinburgh Tollbooth, near the site where his enemy Kirkcaldy had been executed at his insistence. Thereafter, the king ordered the knight Sir William Kirkcaldy’s body exhumed from another Greyfriars gravesite and reinterred in Kinghorn, ostensibly so the Knight of Grange, who had championed his mother, would not have his remains co-mingled with those of Morton, who had engineered his father's death.

Whether the inauspicious stump that is said to mark Morton’s grave is an actual marker or just a post to which animals on their way to the Flesh Market could be tied, is a subject of debate. Yet, whether his grave is marked with the plain stump or not at all seems irrelevant. When compared with the memorials to George Buchanan, the elegant tomb of James Stewart, Earl of Murry, known as The Good Regent, or that of Greyfriars Bobby or his owner the Constable John Gray, James Douglas, Earl of Morton does not fare well. The statue of the Skye Terrier near Greyfriars is an international tourist attraction. People cluster around to pet it, for luck. The city consistently expends funds resurfacing Bobby's nose. No one labors over how much of the story is fact and how much, fiction.

As for the stump which may or may not mark the burial place of the Earl of Morton, no one even bothers to kick it.  They walk on by.

Media Attributions:

George Buchanan: By Kim Traynor (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The Maiden (old style Scottish Guillotine): By David Monniaux - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=227427

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Linda Fetterly Root is an American writer of historical fiction set in Marie Stuart’s Scotland and during the reign of her son James VI and I. She is a retired major crimes prosecutor living in the high desert above Palm Springs. She is presently working on the fifth offering in her Legacy of the Queen of Scots series. Her debut novel in 2011, The First Marie and the Queen of Scots, features some of the characters in this post. Morton is the villain in First Marie and in the novel The Last Knight and the Queen of Scots, being rewritten as a trilogy.

Her books are available on Amazon.

The "great shaft of Cornehill" and the Origins of English Puritanism

By Mark Patton.

The Church of Saint Andrew Undershaft, at the heart of the City of London, is one of very few churches in the city to have survived both the Great Fire of 1666, and the Blitz of the Second World War. The current building dates back to 1532, but there has been a church on the site, dedicated to Saint Andrew, since the Twelfth Century. To what, however, does the word "Undershaft" refer? Certainly not the tower of Saint Mary Axe (otherwise known as "The Gherkin") which now looms over it.

The Church of Saint Andrew Undershaft. Photo: Elisa.rolle (licensed under CCA)

We find a clue in the work of no less a writer than Geoffrey Chaucer:

"Right well aloft, and high ye beare your heade,
The weather cocke, with flying, as ye would kill,
When ye be stuffed, bet of wine than brede,
Then looke ye, when your wombe doth fill,
As ye would beare the great shaft of Cornehill,
Lorde, so merrily crowdeth than your croke,
That all the streete may heare your body cloke."

The "shaft" in question, was a may-pole, erected each year in the street opposite Saint Andrew's Church, and was presumably taller than the church tower, hence the church was to be found "under the shaft."

Dancing around the may-pole, from Isaiah Thomas, "A Little Pretty Pocket-Book," 1767 (image is in the Public Domain).

Mayday in England, by Otto von Reinsberg-Duringsfeld, 1863 (image is in the Public Domain).

The Sixteenth Century chronicler, John Stow (who, incidentally, lies buried in the church, where he worshipped), tells us that:

"This shaft was not raised at any time since evil May-day (so called of an insurrection made by apprentices and other young persons against aliens in the year 1517); but the said shaft was laid along over the doors, and under the pentises of one row of houses and alley gate, called of the shaft Shaft Alley ... in the Ward of Lime Street. It was there, I say, hung on iron hooks many years, till the third of King Edward VI [1547], that one Sir Stephen, Curate of Saint Katherine's Christ Church [Creechurch], preaching at Saint Paul's Cross, said that this shaft was made an idol, by naming the church of Saint Andrew with the addition of "under that shaft."

Sermon preached from Saint Paul's Cross, 1614, by John Gipkyn, Society Of Antiquaries (image is in the Public Domain).

"I have oft-time seen this man," Stow continues, "forsaking the pulpit of his said parish church, preach out of a high elm tree in the midst of the churchyard, and then entering the church, forsaking the altar, to have sung his high mass in English upon a tomb of the dead towards the north. I heard his sermon at Paul's Cross, and I saw the effect that followed ... Thus was the idol, as he termed it, mangled, and after burned."

The curate in question seems to have been implicated in a "commotion of the commons in Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and other shires," and, betrayed by a man about to be executed at Aldgate, "left the city, and was never heard of since."

Sir Stephen's actions (we need not assume that he was either a knight or a baronet - the title was used in a purely honorific sense for churchmen) are remarkably similar to acts of iconoclasm undertaken a hundred years later by people described as "Puritans" (the word was most often used as a term of reproach by others - the iconoclasts typically thought of themselves as Presbyterians, Evangelicals, Baptists or Anabaptists).

In 1547, the Protestant Reformation was well established in England, but, for an increasing vocal minority, taking their inspiration from the French Huguenots, and from John Knox's Church of Scotland, it had not gone nearly far enough. For these English Calvinists, Archbishop Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer still had a whiff of "Popery" about it, a view reinforced by the hierarchy of Anglican bishops, and the use of church vestments.

Popular caricature of Calvinists, c 1650 (image is in the Public Domain).

The word "Puritan" seems not yet to have existed, but it, perhaps, needed to be invented. It appears first to have been used in 1565. In 1572, the Anglican Archbishop, John Whitgift, wrote contemptuously:

"This name Puritane is very aptely given to these men, not bicause they be pure no more than were the Heretikes called Cathari, but bicause they think them selues to be mundiores ceteris, more pure than others, as Cathari did, and separate them selues from all other Churches and congregations as spotted and defyled."

Shakespeare uses the word in Twelfth Night (1601-1602), the servant, Maria, referring to the pompous steward, Malvolio, as "a kind of puritan." The riotous knight, Sir Toby Belch, has previously rebuked Malvolio: "Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" We might almost see this as the first literary confrontation between characters recognisable (in terms yet to be coined) as a "cavalier" and a "round-head" (the latter, another term used mainly as a reproach).

Twelfth Nigh, the First Folio Edition (image is in the Public Domain).

One unintended consequence of the Reformation, as churchmen were newly free to marry, was that an ecclesiastical career became a far more attractive option for the younger sons of the aristocracy and gentry, who did not stand to inherit. Since many "benefices" were in the gift of wealthy families, a young churchman fresh out of Oxford or Cambridge, might accumulate several of them, to very considerable financial advantage. Such a churchman, if he had one "living" in Kent, another in Essex, and another in London, had few incentives to spend time amid the noise and filth of the city, with the effect that many city parishes found themselves in the "care" of an absentee priest. The city vestries did not lack money, so many hired "lecturers" or preachers, and the men who came forward, typically from much more humble backgrounds, the graduates of grammar schools, rather than universities, were often the fundamentalist Presbyterians, Baptists, Anabaptists and Evangelicals, whose fiery iconoclastic sermons would soon be ringing out across the city louder than the peal of Bow Bells.

Sir Stephen's destruction of the "great shaft of Cornehill" was a presage of things to come, and I have the sense that both John Stow and William Shakespeare had at least some notion that this might be the case.

Mark Patton blogs regularly on aspects of history and historical fiction at http://mark-patton.blogspot.co.uk. His novels, Undreamed Shores, An Accidental King, and Omphalos, are published by Crooked Cat Publications, and can be purchased from Amazon.

Henry VIII and the Break with Rome

Judith Arnopp

There are many unanswered questions about the Tudors but probably the most asked is ‘What makes the Tudors so fascinating?’ It could be that they are seldom out of the media. There are numerous films, shows, documentaries, books, articles, websites but there seems to be no definitive answer to their appeal. We have portraits (as discussed in my previous blog which can be read here), we have records of their actions, some good, many bad. We can visit their palaces, see surviving fragments of their clothing, pieces of furniture; examples of their handwriting, craft work, letters. We even have the wreck of Henry’s favourite flag ship. So, all this considered, we should know just about all there is to know about them.  But we don’t, or perhaps it would be better to say, we don’t know as much about them as we would like.

Everyone is an expert when it comes to the Tudors (myself included). We think we know them because we can recognise their faces, count off the names of Henry’s wives on our fingers, and tentatively find our way through the complexities of the Reformation. I am often asked questions about the Tudors that are impossible to answer but the most elusive of all are: ‘What made them tick?’ 'How did their minds work?' What did they think and why did they think it? My favourite question received this week is ‘What did Henry VIII really feel when he broke with Rome?’ I've  been thinking about it ever since but it is one of those questions we can never really answer. Henry is so many things to so many people. A monster, a bigot, a bully ... I could go on but I prefer to try to be objective.

The distance between the Renaissance and the world we know today is unfathomable; even the most astute of us can never begin to really understand the workings of the Tudor mind. Religion today is, in comparison, lax. Few of us are ruled by the teachings of the church as they were then. People of the period, even kings, lived by the dictates of religion; the hours of the day were divided by bells calling them to prayer, the months were marked by feast and saint’s days. Even their diet and sex life was ruled by the church. I don’t believe we can even begin to realise the magnitude of Henry’s break with Rome or the effect it had on society, or more importantly for the purposes of this blog, the impact it had on Henry himself.

In becoming God’s representative on Earth in place of the Pope, Henry must have feared deep down that he was in fact taking one step closer to hell rather than Heaven. His deep-seated Catholic upbringing taught that the Pope was unassailable; snubbing Rome was tantamount to snubbing God himself. Henry was stubborn, he refused the directives of the Pope yet, secretly, he must have trembled. Against his religious scruple, and despite the fact that he found many facets of continental reform troublesome, he was convinced by those eager for reform that a break with Rome was the only way to secure his dynasty. To convince the people, he allowed a bible to be printed, in the vernacular.

The Great Bible issued in 1539 was the first to be printed in English and we have only to turn to the frontispiece to see the change that has taken place. Gone is Christ in majesty; He is rather rudely ousted to the top margins of the page where He whispers God’s word into the King Henry’s ear. Henry, seated just below him, passes on the word of God.

The king is holding two copies of the scriptures, he gives one into the keeping of Cranmer and one into the hands of Cromwell, who in turn pass the word to the clergy and laymen, and so on to the masses (some of whom seem to be in gaol). Comic style speech bubbles give voice to the proceedings, ‘Vivat Rex’ they cry, ‘God save the King,’ praising Henry who is now the main conduit of the word of God.

Copies of this Bible were sent to parishes across the country and Thomas Cromwell ordered one to be placed in every church in England, a crucial tool in the campaign to subliminally persuade the nation of Royal Supremacy and to follow the dictates of their king.

This frontispiece is often used as an example of Henry’s megalomania yet although it was undoubtedly designed to flatter him, he had little to do with it other than to sanction its publication. It was designed by Myles Coverdale working under commission of Thomas Cromwell, whose agenda was to promote reformation and flatter his king.

Henry took his role of Christian King seriously; he was a theologian, the one-time Defender of the Faith, a title conferred on him by Pope Leo X for a pamphlet Henry wrote against Martin Luther. Yet the lesson imprinted on him by his father, Henry VII, on the importance of heirs seems to have obliterated his religious teaching. When the Pope refused to countenance Henry’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon, Henry was cornered. He believed he had to marry Anne Boleyn and secure the Tudor dynasty by getting himself an heir. The Pope’s refusal to favour Henry’s suit made the break with Rome inevitable.

Many, many innocent people died for their refusal to follow Henry’s dictates, his quest for a son with Anne failed, and the subsequent marriage to Jane Seymour bore fruit but she died shortly after bearing him a son. Even having obtained his heir Henry could not forget the untimely death of his elder brother, Arthur, a death that made Henry heir to the throne. Terrified that history would repeat itself, Henry never gave up hope of more sons but, although the king married a further three times, Edward was his last child.

Contrary to the belief of many, Henry never abandoned Catholicism. After the break with Rome he became head of the Catholic Church in England, a reformed church, that dispensed with the Pope and the monastic institutions that rivalled his magnificence in England. Henry maintained his Catholic beliefs to the end and died in the faith. Protestantism was not established in England until the reign of Henry’s much cherished son, King Edward VI. It is my belief that Henry was not eager for reform. it was Catherine he really wanted to be rid of, not Rome but the Pope left him no choice. Had the marriage to Catherine of Aragon been annulled the reformation would never have taken place during Henry's reign but the wave of religious change in Europe was unstoppable and it would have come sooner or later, with or without Henry.

Illustrations from  Wikimedia commons 

***

Judith is the author of eight historical novels and is currently working on Book Two of The Beaufort Chronicles: the life of Margaret Beaufort. You can find out more here.

Duty first - of Philip II, his Tudor Matter and life in general

by Anna Belfrage

Philip II

Philip II of Spain tends to be remembered for two – well, three – things from an English perspective:

• He married Mary Tudor – a match not exactly made in heaven between a love-sick woman and a man who married out of political obligations 
• He wooed his former sister-in-law Elizabeth Tudor, supposedly hoping to marry her when Mary died 
• He sent the Spanish Armada to conquer England.

One could think, based on this, that Philip had a special affinity for England, that his heart and soul longed to be an Englishman. I’m sorry to break this to you, but from Philip’s perspective, England was pretty insignificant – this was a man with more titles than would fit on the fly leaf of a Bible, ruler of a huge empire. No, Philip’s interest in England emanated from his irritation with this pesky Protestant kingdom and its determined support to those equally pesky Protestants in the Spanish Dominions.

Philip II comes down to us through the years as something of a bore. Too stiff, too dour, too fond of black…Rarely does anyone mention his impressive library in El Escorial, where the books were turned the wrong way so that instead of spines, the visitors saw only gold-edged pages. Rarely does anyone mention that Philip had read a substantial part of all those books – conversant in multiple languages, raised to rule, and from a family that set a high value on schooling their princes, Philip had received an excellent and thorough education. And rarely does anyone mention his other wives, his problems with his children, his affectionate letters to his daughters, his carefully chosen gifts to both his children and his wives – or his gruesome death.

So today, I thought we’d spend some time with Philip – or Felipe el Prudente, as those of us who speak Castilian prefer to call him.

Charles I&V

Being born the son of an extremely capable man is not always a blessing. In this case, Philip II had giant footprints to fill, but he doesn’t seem to have been unduly daunted. Philip was born the eldest son of Charles I & V, that powerful Holy Roman Emperor who was ever a champion of his aunt, Catherine of Aragon (see? Another, if indirect, English connection) who ruled an empire so vast he decided it was too big for any mortal man to manage well – which was why, upon Charles’ death, Philip did not become the next Holy Roman Emperor. Being King of Spain and its growing empire was enough of a challenge.

Charles married Philip’s mother to make his Spanish grandees happy. He himself was in no hurry to wed, but by all accounts he was happy with his Portuguese wife, and his son and heir was raised in a harmonious household. Once again, to appease those Spanish grandees, Philip was raised in Spain, speaking Castilian as his first language.

Philip was a serious man – and somewhat shy. Already as a boy, his distinguishing characteristic was his sense of duty. Duty to his father, duty to his mother, duty to his tutors – and as he grew, this would morph into duty to his country, to his family and wives.

Rarely did Philip do something for himself. Never did he caper about while warbling “don’t worry, be happy.” In Philip’s strictly regimented life, happy was not something a serious man aspired to, and as to worry, well Philip always worried. About being good enough. About the lack of sons. About the situation in England. About the Spanish Netherlands. About God. About the state of his linens – Philip had an abhorrence of anything dirty and was meticulous about his hygiene. Major plus, if you ask me…

Charles was quite taken with this reflective son of his, and once Philip was over his childhood years, father and son bonded as Charles tried to teach Philip everything he knew about ruling an empire consisting of various people, various languages, various cultures. There was one fundamental difference between Charles and Philip: Charles had been raised in the polyglot court of his aunt Margaret of Austria, had as a matter of course been exposed to various creeds, various cultures. Philip, on the other hand, had been raised in the tender care of devoted Catholics in a country that viewed all cultures but their own with a sizeable pinch of suspicion. Let’s just say that Philip’s upbringing left him somewhat less…flexible.

He was however, ever the obedient and dutiful son. So when Charles arranged Philip’s first marriage with Princess Maria Manuela of Portugal, Philip of course agreed. As an aside, being a prince – just as much as being a princess – meant little say in who you married. Royal marriage was for building alliances and consolidating power, not for something as ephemeral as love.

Purportedly Maria Manuela

Anyway: Maria Manuela and Philip were of an age – both of them were sixteen – and liked each other well enough. They were also very closely related: Maria’s mother was Philip’s paternal aunt, and Philip’s mother was Maria’s paternal aunt, plus Philip’s maternal grandmother was his father’s maternal aunt. Well: let’s just say it was complicated. Very complicated – and it didn’t help that the somewhat unstable bloodline of Juana of Castile  appeared all over the place. So when little Maria Manuela gave birth to a son in 1545, the baby had a DNA cocktail that did not exactly predestine him to greatness. Even worse, Maria died in childbirth, and Philip was left with a feeble if male heir but no wife.

Years passed. In England, that heretic of a king, the man who’d broken with the Holy Church, finally died – and it was Philip’s conviction Henry VIII was destined for hell. As we all know, Henry’s son was not long for this world, and in 1553, Mary Tudor became Queen of England.

Holy Roman Emperor Charles made happy sounds, as did the Pope. At last an opportunity to bring England back into the fold of the true faith! At the time, Mary was in her late thirties. She was more than aware that time was running out, and she desperately wanted an heir of impeccable Catholic lineage. Charles slid a look at his son – at the time 27 or so – slid a look at Mary, and suggested they wed, despite being cousins. Well: it was suggested to Mary – Philip was ordered to comply with daddy’s wishes.

Mary, wearing Philip's gift to her,
the famous pearl La peregrina

Mary was over the moon. Handsome Philip had everything she desired in a bridegroom. Whether the groom was as thrilled is debatable – his aide wrote that “the marriage was concluded for no fleshly consideration” – but as always Philip set his shoulders and proceeded to do his duty. In this case, his duty was to check the growing power of France and preserve control over the Low Countries. A fiercely Protestant England had offered succour to the Protestants in the Spanish Netherlands, but now, with Mary and Philip firmly in charge, such safe harbours no longer existed. Philip could therefore hope to quell the difficult Dutch before they all embraced the Reformation. That did not go so well for him, putting it mildly, but that is a story for another day.

Mary very much wanted to become pregnant. Here, yet again, Philip did his duty, but despite hope, prayers and effort there was no child – there was just a phantom pregnancy. Philip seems to have doubted all along that Mary was pregnant, and after the sad matter had come to an end, he left his bride for the restless Low Countries. Mary was inconsolable. What Philip felt is unknown, but he was courteous enough to bid his wife a tender farewell.

Philip and Mary

We are now in 1555, and this is when Philip supposedly was starting to regard Elizabeth Tudor as a potential replacement for his sister. Hmm. At the time, Mary was not yet forty, and while barren there was nothing to suggest she was about to die anytime soon. Not that Philip did not enjoy Elizabeth’s company – he liked intelligent and erudite women – and Elizabeth came with the added plus of being younger than Philip rather than eleven years older. But there were issues regarding Elizabeth’s faith, and Philip would never consider marrying a Protestant – his soul shrieked in pain at the thought.

Still, I imagine there was some attraction, and Elizabeth was smart enough to establish a cordial relationship with her brother-in-law, very soon to become one of the more powerful European monarchs.  In 1556, Charles abdicated in favour of his son and brother. Philip became king of Spain and all its dominions, his uncle became the next Holy Roman Emperor, based in the historical homeland of the Hapsburgs, namely Austria.

Mary’s reign was plagued by famine, by her cleansing of the heretics among her subjects, by dwindling trade as her Spanish husband forbade her from doing anything detrimental to Spain. Of course her subjects grumbled, and there were plots aplenty – even, in some cases, headed by her Catholic subjects. France and Spain were at loggerheads, and with Mary being married to Philip, France considered England an enemy too – rightly so, as per Philip, who wanted England’s help in defeating these upstart Frenchies who had the temerity to question just who was the most important Catholic monarch in the world. That’s why Philip popped by on a visit in 1557 – to convince Mary to support war with France. Mary hoped this conjugal visit would lead to other things, and lo and behold, some months later Mary declared herself pregnant. Yet again, a phantom pregnancy…

Poor Mary – no child, no loving husband, just a cool political union as expressed by Philip’s rather laconic comment upon hearing about Mary’s death in 1558. “I feel reasonable regret,” he said.

Elizabeth of Valois

Philip had other matters to concern himself, first and foremost the situation in France. And then there was the matter of his son, Don Carlos, all of thirteen and showing worrying signs of mental instability. Don Carlos had been proposed as a groom for Elizabeth of Valois, this as an attempt to heal the rift between France and Spain. At the Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis, Philip went one step further and offered to marry Elizabeth himself, despite an age difference of almost twenty years.

By all accounts, this was a very happy marriage. Philip was a devoted husband, entranced by his pretty and vivacious wife. She stood by his side during that most difficult time in his life, when his son went from bad to worse until at last Philip had no option but to incarcerate Don Carlos, by now mad as a hatter. Philip’s little wife might have been young, but she was wise, and in her company he found comfort and hope – plus she gave him children. Daughters, to be sure, but healthy living children. A son would surely follow. Unfortunately, that did not happen. Elizabeth died in childbirth – yet another girl, stillborn, and Philip was devastated.

By now we’re in 1568, and while relationships with France remained coolly cordial, Philip now had another mess on his hands: the Low Countries had risen in insurrection, protesting the heavy yoke of Spanish taxes and demanding the right to embrace the Protestant faith. England, of course, hastened to the aid of their religious brethren. Philip was pissed off, putting it mildly. Here he’d been advocating a lenient approach towards the upstart English and their Protestant queen, urging the Pope to cool down, not do anything hasty, and this is how the English dogs repaid him?

On top of the utter political mess in the Spanish Netherlands, plus the rather urgent matter of halting Ottoman expansion into Europe, Philip had the pressing matter of begetting an heir, which was why he married his niece, Anna of Austria, in 1570.

Little Diego

Anna was yet another young bride, more than twenty years his junior, but just like Elizabeth she was affectionate and kind, and Philip was as happy with her as he’d been with his French princess. Anna gave Philip sons – beautiful boys, and Philip had his heir, the Infante Fernando, who died at age six in dysentery. A grief-struck father consoled himself with the fact that there was the Infante Diego to take the dead son’s place. Except that four years later he also died, this time of small-pox. Fortunately, there was one son left, little Philip. Not that Philip was the son his father would have hoped for, being small and sickly, but at least he was alive.

Anna of Austria

Anna died in 1580, leaving Philip a widower for the fourth time. He was never to re-marry. Instead, he invested his efforts in his children and his empire, a lot of his energy directed at pacifying the Dutch now that the Ottomans had been adequately crushed at Lepanto in 1571.

In England, Elizabeth encouraged support to the Dutch, quietly applauded English pirates when they attacked the treasure-laden Spanish galleons, and in general caused Philip much irritation. But so far, Elizabeth had no children, and the obvious heir to the English crown was therefore Mary, Queen of Scots, at present Elizabeth’s prisoner. A light in the tunnel for Catholics everywhere, was Mary – a light brutally extinguished when Elizabeth was prevailed upon to sign the execution order for her cousin in 1587.

The situation in the Spanish Netherlands went from bad to worse, and with Mary dead, there was no hope the English would come to their senses all by themselves and turn from their heretic faith. No, it fell upon Philip to take responsibility for their souls – and, while he was at it, effectively squash all support for the Dutch reformers – which was why he decided to send the Armada, an effort to invade England and once and for all reinstall the Catholic faith. We all know how that ended, don’t we?

Philip in his younger years

Today, we tend to measure Philip by his few failures rather than his numerous successes. Partly because he was who he was, partly because of his turn-coat secretary Antonio Pérez, generations of Europeans have been fed an image of Philip as a cold-hearted fanatic who delighted in seeing heretics twist in torment. Philip has become a victim to the Black Legend, whereby Spain – and Philip – are depicted as infested by evil. Philip has been accused of killing his own son, of strangling prisoners with his own hands. He had been defamed and ridiculed – even in his own lifetime – and rarely has anyone risen to defend him, least of all Philip himself, who chose to never respond to the more ludicrous of Pérez’ accusations.

I would argue Philip was much more than this: in his private letters, we see a man who concerned himself greatly with the well-being of those he loved. In how he managed his empire, we see a man who eschewed absolute power, attempting instead to ensure there were future controls in place. Genuinely devout, he quelled some of the more fanatic aspects of the Counter-Reformation, he encouraged learning and education and brought Spain firmly out of the Middle Ages. Yes, he was the enemy of Protestants' champions such as William the Silent. But he was equally the hero of his Catholic subjects, the determined defender of Europe against the Ottomans, and a man who always tried to do his duty. Always.

Philip's favourite daughter, Catalina

In 1598, an old and weakened Philip fell ill. By now, he was a lonely old man – of his eleven children only three remained alive, and his favourite daughter had recently died, the single occasion in which Philip gave in to open despair, cursing fate for taking his loved ones from him. For 55 days, the king lay dying, covered in pustules and weeping sores. Incapable of rising from his bed, he lay in his stinking waste, any attempt at keeping him clean futile. A humiliating death for a man who abhorred being dirty. He died clutching the same crucifix his father had held when he died. At the moment of his death he was lucid, and it is said he saw Death coming and smiled in welcome, free at last from this life of duty and sorrows – so many sorrows.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Anna Belfrage is the successful author of eight published books, all of them part of The Graham Saga. Set in 17th century Scotland, Virginia and Maryland, this is the story of Matthew Graham and his wife, Alex Lind - two people who should never have met, not when she was born three centuries after him.

Anna's books have won several awards - recently, one of her books won the HNS Indie Book of the Year Award -  and are available on Amazon, or wherever else good books are sold.

Presently, Anna is working on a new series set in 14th century England - the first installment will be published in November 2015. Plus, after the above, she's thinking Philip II has potential as a character...

For more information about Anna and her books, please visit her website. If not on her website, Anna can mostly be found on her blog.