In the middle of the sixteenth century, when most monarchs moved through the countryside with trains of wagons and hundreds of servants, one queen chose a quieter path. Queen Mary of England seldom went on progress at all, and when she did, it was almost always to the house of her kinsman, Cardinal Pole, Archbishop of Canterbury, at Croydon. She deliberately avoided the seasons of hay and corn harvest, knowing that her subjects needed their horses and carts for their own labour and would suffer if the court pressed them into service. At Croydon she found a different kind of recreation. With only two or three of her ladies—one of them always the young Jane Dormer—she would slip out among the poor neighbours of the town. The women of the court dressed simply, so that no one could tell the queen from her maids. There was to be no difference that day.
They entered the low doorways of the cottages and sat down as if they belonged there. Mary asked the husband and wife how they lived, whether the officers of the court treated them fairly when their carts and labour were taken for the queen’s provisions. The answers were often careful, sometimes bitter. One evening she found herself in the house of a collier. The man was eating his supper by the light of a single candle. While he ate, she asked the same quiet questions. He told her that his cart had been pressed from London and that no payment had followed. She asked whether he had demanded his money. He had, he said, from the men who set him to work, but they gave him neither the coins nor a civil word. Looking at him steadily, the queen said, “Friend, is this true that you tell me?” He answered that it was, and begged her—still believing her only a lady of the court—to speak for him and for other poor men to the comptroller. She promised she would, and told him to come the next morning between nine and ten o’clock to receive what was owed.
No sooner had she returned to the court than she sent for the comptroller. The ladies who had been with her that evening listened in silence while the queen gave him a reproof so sharp that they themselves felt the force of it. She told him that he kept ill officers, men who gave neither money nor good words to the poor. From that day the fault must be amended; if she heard of it again, he would feel her displeasure. And she added that the next morning the collier and other poor men would come for their wages, and every penny must be paid. The comptroller stood astonished, wondering how the queen had learned of the matter. The ladies simply told him what had passed in the cottage that evening.
This was not a single act of justice. Whenever Mary found a household burdened with children, she left alms and spoke words of comfort, urging the parents to live thriftily and in the fear of God, and to raise their sons and daughters with care. If the children were many, she took order that they should be provided for—boys and girls alike sent to London as apprentices so they might learn an honest trade and earn their living. She did this in the house of a poor carpenter and in the house of a husbandman’s widow. For hours she would sit among these people with a plainness and affability that left them certain they were speaking only to the queen’s maids. There seemed no difference at all. And if any further complaint reached her ears, she committed the memory of it, very particularly, to Jane Dormer.
In the quiet of those Croydon evenings, a queen who has often been remembered only for severity showed another face: one that sat at a collier’s table, listened to a working man’s grievance, and made certain that the next morning every penny was paid.
Source: The life of Jane Dormer, Duchess of Feria by Henry Clifford
Where to read it: The life of Jane Dormer, Duchess of Feria : Clifford, Henry, fl. 1610 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive