Tudor Queenship: The Reigns of Mary and Elizabeth by Anna Whitelock, Alice Hunt Page A
Authors: Anna Whitelock, Alice Hunt
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had been obtained through “faithfulness” that “all untruth [had] driven out” (76). To eliminate all vestiges of “untruth” or Catholicism was to exorcize the Marian past as well as reclaim the language of true religion. Whether consciously or not—and the theme is anything if not conventional—the gift of hearts harked back both to Mary’s reception at Ipswich in July 1553, when local children had presented her with “a golden heart inscribed ‘the heart of the people,’” and to her and Philip’s entry into London in August 1554, which had reportedly exemplified the citizens’ “faithful, and unfained hertes to the Quenes highnes & the king.” 4 Aside from summoning and dissolving the equation of Truth and Catholicism, made routinely by Marian propagandists, the oration implicitly questioned Mary’s motto Veritas Filia Temporis , which the fourth pageant, featuring Truth and Time, would comprehensively dismantle.
The display of royal genealogy in the first tableau, “The uniting of the two houses of Lancaster and York,” served to emphasize Elizabeth’s legitimacy. Based on Edward Hall’s The Union of the two noble and illustre famelies of Lancastre & Yorke (1548, 1550) and echoing its title, the pageant was “a topical, three-dimensional reworking of the woodcut” from the second edition of the chronicle. 5 Child actors representing Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, and, at the top, Elizabeth herself were seated on three levels of the arch which was “garnished with red roses and white” (79). The show implied that, like her namesake Elizabeth of York, whose marriage to Henry Tudor terminated a drawn-out civil war, this new Elizabeth would usher in peace and unity after the turbulence of Mary’s reign. The historical parallel now invoked to compliment the Protestant queen had been used five years earlier to celebrate the accession of her Catholic predecessor. Circulating at court in the second half of 1554, a short Latin tract by one of Mary’s East Anglian supporters, Robert Wingfield of Brantham, had emphasized Mary Tudor’s ancestry to Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. Wingfield had flatteringly compared the advent of “sacred Mary, child of both Houses, and queen by the best right on the death of Edward VI” to “the joining of these two excellent ruling Houses of Plantagenet and Tudor,” implying that now the confessional conflicts and abuses of Edward’s reign would come to an end. 6 Elizabethan pageant-makers sought to undo and reverse such associations.
The frontispiece to Hall’s chronicle presented the complete Tudor genealogy culminating in Henry VIII. By contrast, the pageant was tendentiously selective, omitting Henry VIII’s other wives and offspring. Though absent, Mary was the target of this dynastic display. By insisting on the validity of Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn, the tableau endorsed his divorce from Mary’s mother, Catherine of Aragon. Mary was thus retrospectively bastardized. The accompanying verses implicitly cast her reign as a period of continued unrest and national suffering akin to the Wars of the Roses: “Therefore as civil war and shed of blood did cease / When these two houses were united into one / So now that jar shall stint, and quietness increase, / We trust, Oh, noble Queen, thou wilt because alone.” Reassuringly, Elizabeth “promised that she would do her whole endeavour for the continual preservation of concord, as the pageant did import.” 7
The pageant’s devisers were hopeful that Elizabeth would succeed where Mary had failed, and they suggested how best to go about it. Henry VII was paired with Elizabeth of York, Henry VIII with Anne Boleyn. The appearance of the solitary figure of Elizabeth graphically conveyed the need for the queen to marry and produce an heir. The point was made directly in the Latin oration penned by Mulcaster and delivered by a pupil of St Paul’s School (90). In this
The display of royal genealogy in the first tableau, “The uniting of the two houses of Lancaster and York,” served to emphasize Elizabeth’s legitimacy. Based on Edward Hall’s The Union of the two noble and illustre famelies of Lancastre & Yorke (1548, 1550) and echoing its title, the pageant was “a topical, three-dimensional reworking of the woodcut” from the second edition of the chronicle. 5 Child actors representing Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, and, at the top, Elizabeth herself were seated on three levels of the arch which was “garnished with red roses and white” (79). The show implied that, like her namesake Elizabeth of York, whose marriage to Henry Tudor terminated a drawn-out civil war, this new Elizabeth would usher in peace and unity after the turbulence of Mary’s reign. The historical parallel now invoked to compliment the Protestant queen had been used five years earlier to celebrate the accession of her Catholic predecessor. Circulating at court in the second half of 1554, a short Latin tract by one of Mary’s East Anglian supporters, Robert Wingfield of Brantham, had emphasized Mary Tudor’s ancestry to Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. Wingfield had flatteringly compared the advent of “sacred Mary, child of both Houses, and queen by the best right on the death of Edward VI” to “the joining of these two excellent ruling Houses of Plantagenet and Tudor,” implying that now the confessional conflicts and abuses of Edward’s reign would come to an end. 6 Elizabethan pageant-makers sought to undo and reverse such associations.
The frontispiece to Hall’s chronicle presented the complete Tudor genealogy culminating in Henry VIII. By contrast, the pageant was tendentiously selective, omitting Henry VIII’s other wives and offspring. Though absent, Mary was the target of this dynastic display. By insisting on the validity of Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn, the tableau endorsed his divorce from Mary’s mother, Catherine of Aragon. Mary was thus retrospectively bastardized. The accompanying verses implicitly cast her reign as a period of continued unrest and national suffering akin to the Wars of the Roses: “Therefore as civil war and shed of blood did cease / When these two houses were united into one / So now that jar shall stint, and quietness increase, / We trust, Oh, noble Queen, thou wilt because alone.” Reassuringly, Elizabeth “promised that she would do her whole endeavour for the continual preservation of concord, as the pageant did import.” 7
The pageant’s devisers were hopeful that Elizabeth would succeed where Mary had failed, and they suggested how best to go about it. Henry VII was paired with Elizabeth of York, Henry VIII with Anne Boleyn. The appearance of the solitary figure of Elizabeth graphically conveyed the need for the queen to marry and produce an heir. The point was made directly in the Latin oration penned by Mulcaster and delivered by a pupil of St Paul’s School (90). In this
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