#queenmary

Two Grumpy Queens 🔥

——————

Normandie and Queen Mary

More from Chris's birthday celebration.

Queen Mary and her subjects

"This queen seldom went in progress except it were to the Cardinal's house at Croydon (for Cardinal Pole her kinsman was Archbishop of Canterbury) avoiding by all means to trouble and grieve her subjects in time of hay and corn harvest, when they had use of their horses and carts. And being at Croydon, for her recreation, with two or three of her ladies, she would visit the poor neighbours, they all seeming to be the maids of the Court: for then she would have no difference, and ever one of these was Jane (Dormer). She would sit down very familiarly in their poor houses, talk with the man and the wife, ask them of their manner of living, how they passed, if the officers of the Court did deal with them, as such whose carts and labours were pressed for the queen's carriages and provisions. And among others, being once in a collier's house, the queen sitting by while he did eat his supper, on her demanding the like of him, he answered, that they had pressed his cart from London, and had not paid him. The queen asked if he had called for his money. He said, yea, to them that set him awork, but they gave him neither his money nor good answer. She demanded ; "Friend," is this true, that you tell me ? "He said," Yea," and prayed her to be a mean to the comptroller, that he and other poor men might be paid. The queen told him she would, and willed that the next morning about nine or ten o'clock, he should come for his money. She came no sooner to the Court, but she called the comptroller, and gave him such a reproof for not satisfying poor men, as the ladies who were with her, when they heard it, much grieved. The queen said that he had ill officers who gave neither money nor good words to poor men, and that hereafter he should see it amended, for if she understood it again, he should hear it to his displeasure; and that the next morning the poor men would come for their money, and that they should be paid every penny. Mr. Comptroller wondered how this came to the queen, and the ladies told him what had passed that evening.

In the visiting of these poor neighbours, if she found them charged with children, she gave them good alms, comforted them, advising them to live thriftily and in the fear of God, and with that care to bring up their children; and if there were many children she took order they should be provided for, placing both boys and girls to be apprentices in London, where they might learn some honest trade, and be able to get their living. This did she in a poor carpenter's house, and the house of the widow of a husbandman. And in this sort did she pass some hours with the poor neighbours, with much plainness and affability; they supposing them all to be the queen's maids, for there seemed no differnce. And if any com plaints were made she commended the remem brance very particularly to Jane Dormer."

Source:

https://archive.org/details/lifejanedormerd00stevgoog/page/n91/mode/2up

The life of Jane Dormer, Duchess of Feria

by Clifford, Henry, fl. 1610; Estcourt, Edgar Edmund, 1816-1884; Stevenson, Joseph, 1806-1895

Internet Archives pages 92-93 (or 64-66 in the printed book)