Sir John Mason (1503 – 20 April 1566) was an
English
diplomat,
spy
and
Member of Parliament.
Mason was
born in Abingdon
in Berkshire (now Oxfordshire). He was educated at
Abingdon
School
, part of the local abbey
in his
native town, where his uncle was abbot, Thomas Rowland.
Later, he
went to All Souls
College, Oxford
and was ordained a priest. He was ordained
an acolyte in 1521 and, later that year, he was elected a fellow of
All Souls and admitted to the BA degree, and in 1525 he incepted
MA.
Life
His career
path changed at Oxford
, after he attracted the attention of Sir Thomas More, perhaps by delivering the
welcome oration for Henry VIII's visit to
the university in 1529. With More's support he secured a
royal exhibition to study in Paris.
In 1531 his old patron, the abbot of
Abingdon, presented him to the first of his many ecclesiastical
benefices: the rectory of Kingston Bagpuize
, Berkshire; but he remained in France.
In 1532 he
attended the meeting between Francis
I of France and Henry VIII at Calais
.
On leaving Paris in 1533, Mason embarked upon a diplomatic career,
and was soon employed carrying letters between London and Paris. To
further his knowledge of foreign lands, he went from France to
Spain, and by July 1534 he was at Valladolid. That year he seemed
to exhibit conservative religious views, lamenting the imprisonment
of Sir Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher. In 1535 he was with
Emperor Charles V's court in Sicily, from where he wrote to his
colleague Thomas Starkey at Padua. Both men belonged to the cadre
of young scholars and diplomats recruited and directed by Thomas
Cromwell. By late 1536 Mason was back in England, his basic
diplomatic training complete.
At this time he was rewarded by Cromwell with
the canonry of Crediton
(Exeter
), and was
named a chaplain to the Bishop of
Lincoln.
In 1537, Mason received his first major assignment, as secretary to
the new English ambassador to the emperor,
Sir Thomas Wyatt. The embassy included
Edmund Bonner, at that time an anti-papalist and loyal servant of
Cromwell, and almost immediately relations between Bonner and Mason
were tense. Bonner complained that Wyatt listened only to Mason,
relying upon him ‘as a God almighty’. Denouncing the secretary as
‘as glorious and as malicious a harlot as any that I know’, Bonner
also accused Mason of treasonous contact with Cardinal Pole and
described him as a papist. Aware that these complaints derived from
malice, Cromwell protected Mason, and throughout 1539 and 1540 the
secretary remained at work in the Netherlands.
As a token of
Cromwell's continued favour, in February 1540 Mason added the
canonry of Timsbury,
Hampshire
to his growing sheaf of benefices.
During a brief visit to England, in late December that year he
married Elizabeth (d. 1594), widow of Richard Hill (d. 1539) of
Hartley Wintney, Hampshire, and daughter of Thomas Isley of Kent.
Although he acquired Hill's estate through his marriage, and was
licensed to continue holding his benefices despite it, Mason soon
set off to rejoin Wyatt. His journey was cut short, however, for in
the turmoil following the fall of Cromwell Bonner's earlier charges
of treason were revived, and on 25 January 1541 Mason was urgently
recalled to London, to join Wyatt in the Tower. With Wyatt's
support, however, he was soon cleared, and on 21 March Mason and
his master were pardoned.
Following his release Mason did not immediately return abroad, but
instead remained in England, where his acknowledged administrative
acumen led to his appointment in late September 1541 as a clerk of
the privy council, as a deputy for William Paget. In October 1542
Mason replaced Sir Brian Tuke as French secretary. He also
regularly acted for Paget as clerk of parliaments and, upon Paget's
appointment as principal secretary, in May 1543 Mason was named
clerk of the council for life. The summer of 1544 found him once
more across the channel, serving as a royal secretary at the
siege of Boulogne. In November
1545 Mason and Paget were appointed joint masters of the posts,
while at the same time a second French secretary was appointed to
alleviate Mason's heavy workload.
Mason finally resumed diplomatic work in April 1546, when he
visited a number of German princes to promote a league with England
(designed to frustrate French diplomacy) and to propose a council
to resolve religious differences within the empire. Neither
suggestion found much favour, forcing Mason to admit failure and to
seek speedy recall. While waiting to return, he attended the
emperor's court at Speyer; he arrived home some time between July
and November.
Mason's labours were rewarded with a knighthood at the coronation
of Edward VI in February 1547. Although not a member of Protector
Somerset's inner circle, he remained active in royal service, and
there were rumours in April 1547 that he was to become English
ambassador to the emperor. On 11 May his stepdaughter Mary Hill
married the king's tutor John Cheke. Mason prepared a manuscript
treatise on the superiority of the English crown over Scotland,
apparently for the protector. With the overthrow of Somerset in the
council coup of October 1549, Secretary Paget's power was further
enhanced, which in turn had important consequences for his friend
and protégé Mason, whose wife was also a relative of the Dudleys.
Despite being a married layman, on 2 November Mason was presented
by the crown to the
deanery of
Winchester.
He had no chance for leisure, however, for in January 1550 it was
reported that he was soon to be sent to France to negotiate peace.
To enhance his diplomatic stature, on 19 April he was sworn of the
privy council, and four days later he departed for France. By
mid-June he was in Paris, and then joined the peripatetic French
court.
Negotiations dragged on (from Poissy to Blois
to Amboise
), while
Mason complained repeatedly about the twin curses of early modern
diplomatic life: ill health and poverty.
His appeals to return to England were not ignored: by February 1551
he had been joined in France by his replacement, but the council
ordered Mason to remain until a peace treaty was settled. At last,
on 20 July 1551, a marriage treaty was concluded at Angers (between
Edward VI and a daughter of Henry II), and a relieved Mason
departed for England. By mid-September he was back at the council
board, but one lasting legacy of his stay in Paris was the
publication, which he had arranged while there, of Edward Wotton's
treatise on botany, De differentiis animalium (1552).
Mason was an active member of the Edwardian privy council: hearing
the case against Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall (1551); investigating
tampering with the coinage (1552); and reporting on Irish mines
(1553). His standing is illuminated by the fact that, after a
by-election in
Reading in which the
borough had unsuccessfully tried to return a kinsman of Somerset,
on 18 January 1552 Mason was certified as its new MP; he had no
previous connection with the town. He also served as a clerk of
parliament.
In early 1553, he was to be sent as ambassador to the emperor, but
excused himself as too old. As a councillor Mason witnessed the
will of Edward VI which altered the succession, and was directly
involved in the crisis which followed the king's death on 6 July.
On 12 July Mason was chosen to meet the anxious imperial
ambassadors to discuss the fate of Princess Mary, and the council's
intentions. Despite his role as a spokesman, Mason was an astute
political survivor and, realizing that Jane Grey's cause was
doomed, quickly made his peace with Mary. Indeed, by 30 July he had
joined Mary's privy council.
Suspicions undoubtedly remained, for in early September reports
circulated that Mason (and Paget) would retire from court. Before
the month was over, however, Mason had been named to replace Thomas
Thirlby as English ambassador to the emperor.
In late 1553, Thirlby briefly returned to Brussels and Mason to
England. Misfortune befell his family in early 1554 when two of his
brothers-in-law were executed for their parts in Wyatt's rebellion,
despite Mason's anxious appeals for clemency. Nonetheless, he was
elected MP for
Hampshire to the
parliament which opened on 2 April. He was in London on 15 April,
but soon after returned to the Netherlands. Still mistrusted in
some quarters, he was reported by the imperial ambassador that year
to be hostile to Catholicism, yet in 1555 he was rumoured as a
possible candidate for the post of chief secretary.
Although opposed to Mary's proposed
Habsburg marriage, Mason remained as ambassador to
Charles V but he was
in
Windsor in March 1556 and finally
recalled to England that summer.
As a layman, and married, Mason was
stripped of his ecclesiastical benefices that year and in October
was compelled to resign his chancellorship at Oxford in favour of Cardinal Pole. However, he was
compensated with a substantial pension.
In October 1557, there were rumours that Mason, an active Marian
councillor, would shortly replace William Petre as principal
secretary, and on 31 October 1558 (not long before her death) the
queen appointed him treasurer of the chamber. He served again as
knight of the shire for Hampshire in that year's parliament.
Upon the accession of
Elizabeth
I in November 1558 Mason was the sole senior household officer
(treasurer of the chamber) to retain his post (and also the
richest): testimony to his strong administrative ability and sound
political judgement.
Despite the distrust of some Protestants, Mason also remained at the council
board, where during the early weeks of the reign he pressed for
peace with France, even at the price of abandoning claims to
Calais.
Elizabeth
soon drew upon his considerable diplomatic experience, unhappy with
the lack of progress by English negotiators at the peace talks at Le
Cateau-Cambrésis
. Dispatched to the conference in mid-March
1559 to deliver a royal rebuke to the English commissioners, Mason
found that a treaty had been concluded a few days earlier.
He was
soon back in England as a councillor; rumours that he was to be
sent as ambassador to Madrid
came to
nothing. While he was personally closer to his old
friends Paget and Petre than to William
Cecil, Mason's opposition to the secretary's intervention in
Scotland and the Newhaven (Le Havre
) expedition owed more to his pragmatism than to
factional politics.
Despite recurring bouts of ill health, Mason continued freely to
offer counsel, warning of the perils of foreign military adventures
and urging the queen to pursue peace. He last attended the council
in June 1565. Meanwhile he was again MP for Hampshire in the
parliaments of 1559 and 1563, and was re-elected chancellor of
Oxford in June 1559, serving until his resignation in December
1564.
Throughout his career, Mason worked to protect and promote the
interests of his native Abingdon. As a Berkshire chantry
commissioner he was involved in the suppression of the Hospital of
St Helen, which he later restored as Christ's Hospital (May 1553),
serving as its first master. In 1549 Mason became steward of the
lands of the dissolved abbey, and was a patron of the local grammar
school. Although in 1551 he wrote to William Cecil opposing
Abingdon's bid for a borough charter, it seems likely that he
assisted in securing that charter in 1556, earning him the effusive
praise of Francis Little in
A Monument of Christian
Munificence (1627), as one ‘whose memory deserves and ought to
be honoured with a statue advanced in the most conspicuous place of
this town’ (p. 47).
Final years
During
his final years he divided his time between his principal estate at
Hartley Wintney and the house of his son-in-law Francis Spelman at
Gunnersbury
, Middlesex
. The ambiguity surrounding Mason's religious
views was shared by many of his colleagues, and continued to the
end of his life: in 1564, the
Bishop of Winchester reported that he
was favourable to true religion, while at his death the Spanish
ambassador claimed he was a
Catholic. There is no evidence of
Catholicism in his will, in which he asked forgiveness for his sins
from God ‘who hathe saved us not according unto workes of Justice
that we have doon but according unto his Mercie’.
Among its many beneficiaries were his half-brother Thomas Wikes, or
Wykes, of Drayton, near Abingdon, Thomas's children, and the
children of another half-brother, John Wikes. His overseers were
named as Secretary of State
Sir
William Cecil, the master of the rolls,
Sir William Cordell, the
archdeacon of Surrey,
John Watson, and Robert Creswell. He
died on 20 or 21 April 1566 and was buried in the north choir aisle
of St Paul's Cathedral in London, where his widow and his heir, his
nephew Anthony Wyckes (later Mason), erected a monument; his son
Thomas had predeceased him, although he was survived by several
stepdaughters.
The monument proclaimed that Mason had faithfully served four
Tudor monarchs as ambassador and
councillor, successfully weathering a succession of religious and
political storms. His political longevity testified to his
discretion in keeping his own counsel, and his adroitness in
rendering himself indispensable to the crown. His diplomatic skill
and personal affability were noticed by his contemporaries. On one
occasion, during a dinner-table debate the scholar Roger Ascham
observed how Mason, ‘after his maner, was verie merie with both
parties, pleasantlie playing both’. Mason himself claimed that his
motto was ‘do and say nothing’. Yet he had consistently promoted
scholarship, and his scholarly interests were praised by John
Leland in his Encomia. He bequeathed at least a dozen volumes to
the library of All Souls.
John Mason
School
, a secondary school in Abingdon, is named after
him.
References
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