John Mason (diplomat) - Diplomatic Career

Diplomatic Career

Mason's 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 (died 1594), widow of Richard Hill (died 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; and then – briefly – Khortoza as a special guest of the Cardinal. 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, realising 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 University in favour of Cardinal Reginald 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).