Gardiner looked at me with something like exasperation. Often he had deplored what he thought of as my woman's sentimentality. One did not govern a country on sentiment. If the law of the country was that people should worship in the way it was before my father broke with Rome, then that was how it should be.
I wanted to explain to him that it was different now. Since Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses on the church door at Wittenberg, Protestantism had grown apace, and there were many Protestants in England who had flourished under my brother. Would they lightly discard those new beliefs and cheerfully return to the old? They certainly would not, and then…
“Let it be gradual,” I said.
“Perhaps you will talk to the King,” replied Gardiner.
He knew that I would. He knew that I sought every opportunity of talking to Philip, and he knew that Philip would doubtless agree with the Council.
I told Philip how gratified I was that we were restoring the true religion. We had come out of the sleep, as someone said, and we were now getting back onto the right course. It was what God had ordained for me, and I was achieving it.
“It is a matter for rejoicing,” said Philip.
“Philip,” I said earnestly. “I do not wish the law to be harsh.”
He never betrayed his feelings, but I could see his thoughts were much the same as Gardiner's had been and that he believed my misguided sentiments stood in the way of good government.
He said, “If the people will not come to the truth voluntarily, they must be led to it.”
“How can they be led if they will not listen?”
“When they see what happens to heretics, they will be led.”
“There will always be martyrs.”
“There will always be heretics and they must be removed.”
“I remember Anne Askew. She was a good woman, but misguided in her views. They racked her. They burned her at the stake.”
“You must understand. A heretic denies God's truth. What is there for him…or her… when they are brought before their Maker? It will be hell fire for them… eternal fire. That which is felt at the stake will be nothing compared with what is to come.”
I covered my face with my hands.
“I wish it need not be,” I said.
“There must be examples.”
“Each person must be given a chance to recant.”
Philip nodded. “That should be. And for the death of one, think of the thousands who will be saved by his example. It is easy to talk of martyrdom, but when the flames are actually seen to consume the bodies of those who sin against God, men and women will question their beliefs. It is the way to turn people to the truth.”
He persuaded me, and in January, when Parliament was dissolved, the way ahead was clear.
I wanted every person to have a chance to save himor herself. All they had to do was turn from the new learning to the old, true religion. I wanted all to know that I would be a loving monarch if my people would obey the laws of the land. I wanted no trouble. I wanted them to regard me as their mother. I wanted them to know I loved them and that, if I agreed to punishment—and this applied particularly to heretics, it was for their own good.
I said that all those who had been imprisoned at the time of the Wyatt rebellion should be released. I thought often of Edward Courtenay, with whom I had at one time considered a marriage. How fortunate I had been to escape that! In spite of his Plantagenet blood, he would have been a most unsuitable husband. How different Philip was!
I said he should be released from Fotheringay, where he had lived virtually as a prisoner since his release from the Tower. But he must not stay in England, of course. That could be unsafe. He and Elizabeth might plot together. She had sworn she was loyal to me, and I tried to believe her, but I would never really know Elizabeth. She was shrewd. The perils through which she had passed would have made her so. I must remember her dangerous flirtation with Seymour, which might have had dire results.
So Courtenay could go free only if he left the country. He went, with the injunction that he must not return to England without permission.
It was in February of that second year of my reign that the first heretic was burned at the stake for his religious opinions. His name was Rogers, and people gathered at Smithfield to watch him burn. In Coventry the rector of All Hallows Church was burned and at Hadleigh Rowland Taylor, a wellknown adherent to the Protestant cause, met the same fate. He was the parish priest and much loved, a man of great virtue, apart from his stubbornness in religious matters. He had protested violently when a priest had been sent to perform Mass in his church. His arrest and sentence to the stake had followed. But the most prominent victim was John Hooper, the Bishop of Gloucester and Worcester.
I was very distressed. Why could they not accept the truth? All were given the chance to. All they had to do was deny their faith and accept the true one, and they would be saved.
I did remember how I had clung to my faith and how I had put myself in danger by my firm adherence to it. But that was the true faith. I laughed at myself. These poor people deluded themselves that their was the true one.
Because Hooper was so well known, there was more talk about him than the others. He had been such a good man, people were saying: he had a wife who had borne nine children. I knew this. But he had been remonstrated with and given every chance. He had been arrested some time before on some petty charge, because Gardiner had intimated to me that he was a dangerous man. He believed so fervently in his style of religion, and people were moved by his eloquence and inclined to follow him.
Hooper had been in the Fleet Prison for some time, and he had made it known that there he had been treated worse than if he had been a slave.
Gardiner saw how distressed I was that this man had suffered death by burning, and he insisted that he had done much harm with his preaching and writing, and would have done more if he had been allowed to live. He had been offered every chance.
The day before his death, Sir Anthony Kingston had gone to him and begged him to recant, for to do so would save his life. But he would not. He said he would rather face the flames.
“He was a foolish man,” said Gardiner.
“Aye,” I replied, “but a brave one.”
I was deeply disturbed that there should be this religious persecution in my reign. I had wanted to be good to all my people. I almost wished that I was back in the past, when I was without responsibilities, even wondering who was seeking to destroy me.
Now the power was mine to destroy others, I could not rest. My nights were haunted by memories of my stepmother Katharine Parr. She came to me in dreams, side by side with Anne Askew.
“All these heretics have to do is recant,” I continually reminded myself. If they did, they would be received with joy. Is there not greater joy in the sinner who repents? They should have instruction. They should have time to learn. I would insist on that.
I was pleased when one of the Franciscans preached at Court, pointing out that burning at the stake was not the way.
I said to Philip, “He is right.”
But Philip did not think so. In his native country the Inquisition flourished. It had a beneficial effect, he insisted. People lived in fear of it. Only the reckless and foolhardy wanted to pit themselves against it.
After that sermon, there was a lull for a while, and then the arrests began again and the burning continued.
What was happening threw a cloud over my happiness.
It was April, and I believed that the birth of my child was imminent. I was to go to Hampton Court, where arrangements were being made for my confinement. Soon, I told myself, I should forget my troubles. In a few weeks from now I should have my child.