300 The Tudor Age
The outcome was a new Book of Rates in May 1558, which
increased customs receipts by 75 per cent. Nothing on this scale
would be tried again until James I's reign, when the Great
Contract of 1610 proved such a disastrous failure.
Yet Mary made two bad mistakes. The first was to allow
some 800 English Protestants to emigrate to Frankfurt, Zurich,
and Geneva. For not only did these exiles launch a relentless
crusade of anti-Catholic propaganda and subversive literature
against England, which the government was obliged to suppress
or refute as best it could; they also flocked home again upon
the accession, in 1558, of Elizabeth, the Protestant Deborah, as
they believed her to be, when some were appointed bishops,
despite the inherent tension between the Anglican ceremonials
they became obliged to enforce, and the Genevan distaste for
popish rituals and vestments they had so recently shared.
Mary's second mistake was her Spanish marriage. Her union
with Philip, son of the Emperor Charles V, was her own idea,
celebrated in July 1554 despite the pleas of privy councillors
and Parliament. Philip was styled king jointly with Mary as
queen during her lifetime; however, his rights in England were
to expire if Mary died childless, as proved to be the case. Yet
even these terms did not appease opponents of the match: four
simultaneous rebellions were planned for 1554, of which Sir
Thomas Wyatt's, in Kent, began prematurely in January. Wyatt
led 3,000 men to London, proclaiming that 'we seek no harm to
the Queen, but better council and counsellors'. But Wyatt de-
clined to pillage London; he removed his force to Kingston—a
fatal diversion. His army was defeated, and 100 rebels, includ-
ing Wyatt, were executed as traitors. The other projected rebel-
lions came to nothing.
Wyatt's fear that England would become a Spanish pawn
was, none the less, justified. In 1556, Philip became king of
Spain, following Charles V's abdication. Within a year, he had
dragged his wife into a war with Henry II of France, which
culminated in the recapture of Calais by the duke of Guise
(7 January 1558). Calais, apart from its commercial value as the
Queen Mary 301
wool Staple, was symbolic of the glorious French campaigns of
the Black Prince and Henry V: its loss was more than bad luck.
Mary's death in November 1558 was thus unmourned, and the
fact that Cardinal Pole died within a few hours of the queen
was a positive fillip. Henry II meanwhile exulted with Te Deum
and bonfires, and the marriage of Mary Stuart to the Dauphin,
the perilous consequence of the aggression of Henry VIII and
Somerset, was expedited.
Elizabeth I
Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, ascended
her throne on 17 November 1558. Ruler of England for forty-
four years, she has won a reputation far in excess of her
achievements. It is plain that her own propaganda, the cult of
Gloriana, her sheer longevity, the coincidence of the Shakespear-
ian moment, and the defeat of the Armada have beguiled us into
ignoring the many problems of her reign.
Yet whatever fables have been peddled, Sir Robert Naunton
was right when he said: 'Though very capable of counsel, she
was absolute enough in her own resolution, which was appar-
ent even to her last.' She knew her mind and controlled her
policy; her instinct to power was infallible. Councillors at-
tempted to concert their approaches to her on sensitive matters,
but they were rarely successful; she would lose her temper where-
upon the matter would rest in abeyance. But she postponed
important decisions: unless panicked, she could delay for years.
On the other hand, her attitude has to be offset against her
financial position and the conservatism of most of her subjects
who were far from being Protestant 'converts' before the out-
break of war with Spain. Possibly her greatest asset was lack of
preconceptions; she was not a conviction-politician like Sir
Francis Walsingham or the earl of Leicester, though her taste
for realpolitik exceeded Lord Burghley's. Apart from her con-
cern to recover Calais as revealed by her French campaign of
1563, she ignored conventional royal ambitions. Her father's