Tudor Queens of England Read online

  TUDOR QUEENS OF ENGLAND

  This page intentionally left blank Tudor Queens of England

  David Loades

  Continuum UK, The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX

  Continuum US, 80 Maiden Lane, Suite 704, New York, NY 10038

  www.continuumbooks.com Copyright © David Loades 2009

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission from the publishers.

  First published 2009

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978 1 84725 019 3

  Typeset by Pindar NZ, Auckland, New Zealand

  Printed and bound by MPG Books Ltd, Cornwall, Great Britain

  Contents

  Illustrations vii

  Introduction: Image and Reality

  1

  1 The Queen as Trophy: Catherine de Valois

  13

  2 The Queen as Dominatrix: Margaret of Anjou

  23

  3 The Queen as Lover: Elizabeth Woodville

  43

  4 The Queen as Helpmate: Elizabeth of York

  71

  5 The Queen as Foreign Ally: Catherine of Aragon and Anne of Cleves

  87

  6 The Domestic Queens: Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour and

  Catherine

  Parr

  113

  7 The Queen as Whore: Catherine Howard

  139

  8 The Queens who Never Were: Jane Grey and Mary Stuart

  155

  9 The Married Sovereign: Queen Mary I

  187

  10 The Unmarried Sovereign: Elizabeth I

  209

  Epilogue: Queens Since 1603

  227

  Notes

  235

  Additional Reading Suggestions

  249

  Index

  253

  This page intentionally left blank

  Illustrations

  Between Pages 64 and 69 1

  Catherine de Valois

  2

  The marriage of Henry VI to Margaret of Anjou

  3

  Elizabeth Woodville

  4

  Elizabeth of York

  5

  Catherine of Aragon

  6

  Anne of Cleves

  Between Pages 178 and 185 7

  Anne Boleyn

  8

  Jane Seymour

  9

  Catherine Parr

  10

  Catherine Howard

  11

  Jane Grey

  12

  Mary Queen of Scots

  13

  Mary I

  14

  Elizabeth I

  For Judith,

  wife, sovereign and friend

  Introduction: Image and Reality A medieval queen was not a ruler. The imagery of power was exclusively masculine and very largely military. A king led his soldiers into battle, executed the brutal sentences of justice upon criminals and played war games with his nobles and companions. The ideal Christian prince was a crusader, the father of strong sons, tough and wise. It was his fi rst duty to protect his realm in arms and to be leader and patron of those who fought. He was also the protector of the Church – that is of those who prayed – and of those who laboured, traded or otherwise lived under the shelter of his shield. His councillors and clerks were either nobles, who shared his value systems, or celibate clergy. God had been incarnate in the form of a man, and the whole bible, particularly the Old Testament, was heavily androcentr

  ic.1 Women were seen mainly in relation to men – the symbolism of Adam’s rib being frequently invoked. A woman complemented her husband, bearing his children, tempering his severity, sustaining his virtue – and of course fl attering his ego. Women were believed to be intellectually inferior to men, physically weaker and morally more fragile. The ideal woman was chaste, obedient and patient. A woman held no offi ce in the public domain, and her virtue was judged against her own kind, not in relation to men. Her role model was the Virgin Mary, the mother of God and the only woman to have accomplished the miraculous feat of being a mother and a virgin simultaneously. At the same time every woman was also Eve, a source of temptation and potentially of the betrayal of God. This seems to have been primarily a clerical perception, and arose from the extremely negative attitude of the medieval Church towards sexuality. Female sexuality was mysterious and fascinating but also evil if not strictly controlled. Without the discipline that man imposed upon her, any woman might be a whore or a witch

  – or both. In the middle of the sixteenth century John Knox (not, admittedly, a sympathetic witness) could write:

  Of which words it is plain that the Apostle meaneth (in 1 Corinthians 11) that woman in her greatest perfection should have knowen that man was Lord above her … in her greatest perfection woman was created to be subject to man. But after her fall and rebel lion committed against God, there was put upon her a new necessity, and she was made subject to man by the irrevocable sentence of God, pronounced in these words: 2

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  I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception, with sorrow shalt thou bear thy children, and thy will shall be subject to thy man; and he shall bear dominion over

  thee …2 And he went on to quote Tertullian: ‘Thou are the porte and gate of the Devil. Thou art the fi rst transgressor of God’s law …’ In spite of Tertullian, this was sharper and more hostile than the prevailing medieval view and Christine de Pisan was not alone in presenting her contemporaries in a positive light. In the right circumstances (within marriage), motherhood was a noble calling, but it was strictly under male control and one of the prime reasons for the extreme hostility to extra-marital sex was that it exemplifi ed female nature operating outside that control. The single mother was like the masterless man, operating beyond the conventional discipline of society.

  Both the canon and the common law refl ected these perceptions. The woman who had extra-marital sex, whether or not she had borne a child, was a suitable subject for penance and was liable to the ostracized – especially by other women. She was also liable to be without support because men were notoriously reluctant to admit their responsibility for such matters; she was thus a burden on the Church’s charitable resources. Fornication was by far the commonest reason why women were cited before the ecclesiastical courts. Where the man could be identifi ed he would be cited as well but often he seems to have avoided detection. In theory the distinction between rape and fornication was very clear. The former was a crime under the common law for which the death penalty could be imposed; the latter was a sin by both parties for which the woman usually carried the responsibility. The trouble was that then (as now) the practical distinction lay not in the commission of the act but in the attitude of the woman – which was no less problematic to establish than it is today. Women were certainly protected against predatory males as far as the law was concerned but the uncertainties of prosecution remained formidable, especially if the guilty party was well protected by patronage. In terms of property, the law made a clear distinction between married and unmarried women. The latter, whether virgins or widows, had full control over whatever they might possess, whether it were lands or moveable goods, and were protected against depredations in the same way that men were. In other words the

  femme seul was a proper person in the eyes of the law. 3 Not so the married woman, or femme couvert. She had no existence apart from her husband and
any property that she took into the marriage remained vested in him for the duration of his life, unless it were protected by some special trust or other covenant. Her only safeguard was that her husband could not dispose of any such property without her consent, but it could not descend to her own heirs

  I N T R O D U C T I O N

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  until after his death. She could not testify against him in court and her position was in every sense dependent.

  If an aristocrat died without male heirs then his property could descend to his daughter or be equally divided if there was more than one. His title, however, if he had one, became extinct. This was a refl ection of the military origins of such dignities and of the consideration that no woman could perform military service in person. A woman could transmit a claim but it was entirely at the discretion of the monarch whether such a claim was recognized – and usually it was not. Of course if the same aristocrat died without heirs of any kind then his property also returned to the Crown by a process known as

  escheat. In the sixteenth century it was possible for a woman to hold a title of nobility in her own right by special creation but in the two cases where this happened – the Earldom of Salisbury (Margaret Pole) and the Marquisate of Pembroke (Anne Boleyn) – the heritability of the title was not tested as both were extinguished by attainder. No woman held such a title during the fi fteenth century. From these limitations the royal dignity itself stood apart. In France the so-called Salic Law not only prohibited a woman from holding the Crown, but also barred all claims transmitted through the female line. That was not the case in England and both the Yorkists and the Tudors based their claims primarily on the female line of descent. The possession of the Crown itself, however, had never been tested. In the twelfth century the Empress Matilda had made such a claim and had been recognized by some but had never secured effective possession and had never been crowned. This issue came to the fore during the reign of Henry VIII and was actually put to the test on the death of Edward VI in 1553, when both the potential claimants were women. As we shall see, the consequences were to preoccupy lawyers and councillors alike when Mary, the successful claimant, announced her intention to marry. The problem was that a ruling queen was forced by her position into being a surrogate male but was simultaneously a woman and perceived as being subject to all the traditional limitations of her sex. This created challenges both to her ingenuity and to her sense of identity and made her a completely different creature from a Queen Consort, who was primarily a wife. The latter did not exercise dominium, but was both ideologically and politically integral to the proper deployment of her husband’s authority. 4 What she held was a status rather than an offi ce but, if she acted discreetly and respected the perceptions of those about her, she could supply vital elements in her husband’s kingship that might otherwise be lacking. As Jacobus de Casalis wrote in The Game and Play of Chess: A Quene ought to be chaste, wyse, of honest peple/well mannered and not curious in nourishynge of her children/her wysedom ought not only tappere in fact and workes, but 4

  T U D O R Q U E E N S O F E N G L A N D

  also in speakynge that is to wete that she be secrete and telle not suche thynges as ought to be holden secrete … A Quene ought to be well mannered amonge all she ought to be tymerous and shamefast …

  5 In other words she should show all those qualities that were held to be virtues in contemporary women, but to an enhanced degree because of her unique position. Most important, perhaps, was her role as mediator and intercessor. Here the image of the Virgin was particularly signifi cant because of the Church’s emphasis upon the supernatural intercession that she was perceived to offer. Stories of Mary interceding for otherwise hopeless sinners were legion and the sight of a human queen, on her knees and with her hair unbound before her stern and unbending lord had an irresistible appeal. When Catherine interceded for the perpetrators of the Evil May Day in 1517 she was acting out a trope, as indeed Henry was in responding. There was also more than a suggestion that – just as the Queen was acting out a human role in this drama – so the King was acting out a Divine mercy. A foreign queen had a double responsibility in this respect. Not only could she intercede in this conventional sense but she was also the natural mediator between her husband and her own kindred. Both Catherine de Valois and Margaret of Anjou were supposed to be not only mediators but, in their marriages, symbols of peace and reconciliation. It was the wedding, after all, which made a queen, just as it was the coronation that made a king. When a queen was crowned, it was not only a recognition of her position but also an enhancement of her husband’s power and a way of emphasizing that she was no longer an ordinary noblewoman. It was because their wedding had been quiet to the point of being secret that, on 30 September 1464, Elizabeth Woodville was led into the chapel of Reading Abbey by the Duke of Clarence and the Earl of Warwick ‘and openly honoured as Queen by the Lords and all the people’.

  6 Because Elizabeth of York had her own claim to the kingdom, a claim that had to be subsumed in that of her husband, her marriage to Henry VII in 1486

  was choreographed with especial care and medallions were struck. It was a rite of passage for the kingdom, as well as for Elizabeth. She was crowned on St Katherine’s day and William Capgrave’s life of St Katherine was not slow to make the same point, that ‘government by a woman is unfeasible’ and that consequently it was the King’s position that mattered.

  7 Of course a foreign queen could also serve a quite different purpose if circumstances demanded it. She could be a lightening conductor for hostility and frustration. When the expected peace with France failed to follow the marriage of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou in 1445, the unfortunate young woman found

  I N T R O D U C T I O N

  5

  herself blamed. Margaret was to be particularly vulnerable in this respect because circumstances forced her into a role of political leadership that was supposed to be alien to her nature. In 1462, when she found herself struggling to maintain the cause of her increasingly defi cient husband, she was fi ercely denounced by Yorkist propagandists for bringing in Frenchmen and Scots ‘to destroy utterly the name, the tongue and all the bloude Englyshe of this oure saide R

  ealme …’8 Margaret was caught in a trap, because she was forced to appear as Henry’s agent at a time when he was virtually incapable of helping himself – and there was no way in which her image could conform to the political reality. A queen was supposed to be chaste because only by such means could the integrity of the royal line be protected, but the most important of all her functions was to bear her husband children. If she was defi cient in other ways, skilful image brokers could conceal the fact, but no amount of spin could disguise her failure to produce an heir. Hence the ceremony that attended a royal lying in. This was the classic opportunity to display successful queenship, and churchings and Christenings were public and splendid events. Childbirth was the ultimate female mystery and even comparatively humble gentlewomen would retire from view, accompanied by a midwife and one or two female servants. Queens did the same on a grander scale. However in their cases the stakes were much higher and the possibilities of fraud or substitution proportionately greater. Consequently, although no man (unless he were a physician) could be present at the birth itself, visits from royal offi cials during the period of confi nement were common. In 1555

  Mary’s phantom pregnancy gave rise to all sorts of scandalous rumours and her condition was clearly as much of a mystery to contemporaries as it has remained ever since – but no one had the temerity to accuse their sovereign of adultery. When Anne Boleyn had a miscarriage in February 1536, her enemies were quick to attribute it to sexual misconduct but it would have been high treason to have levelled similar accusations against Mary – and not even John Foxe attempted to do so. The unfortunate Margaret of Anjou was so accused, although not at the time of Prince Edward’s birth. As evidence of Henry’s mental incapacity began to mount after 1453 it began to be doubted whether he could eve
r have fathered a son and as young Edward’s place in the scheme of Lancastrian monarchy became more evident and immediate their Yorkist rivals had every incentive to impugn his legitimacy. That was unusual; the careful observance of all the correct rituals of motherhood was normally suffi cient to protect the Queen from such slanders and to guarantee the subsequent enhancement of her status.

  The queen who was also the mother of a male heir was doubly fortunate. Not only had she fulfi lled her highest duty – she had enhanced her husband’s authority to an immeasurable extent and demonstrated that God looked favourably upon 6

  T U D O R Q U E E N S O F E N G L A N D

  his government. The political role of the Queen Consort thus depended to some extent upon her womanhood but it also varied with circumstances and with her own personality. A queen who was the mother of a royal prince could not expect the same control over his upbringing that an ordinary gentlewoman had. Despite the Holy Family imagery she did not breastfeed him – that being the responsibility of a specially appointed wet nurse. Very often a separate household was established for him almost from the time of his birth. The queen was consulted but all appointments were made by the King, even when the child was

  ‘among the women’ in accordance with the custom of the time. Anne Boleyn does not even seem to have been consulted when her daughter Elizabeth was weaned and contact between them seems to have been confi ned to regular visits. When Margaret’s son, Prince Edward, was created Prince of Wales in March 1454 he was less than a year old and, although his Council was a political and administrative institution rather than a domestic one, Queen Margaret was infl uential in its creation. Edward IV’s son, also Edward, was promoted at about the same age in 1471 and his mother was, very unusually, formally admitted as a councillor and is alleged to have dominated that body, which was one of the reasons why the Duke of Gloucester viewed her with suspicion in 1483. Arthur was slightly older when he was promoted in 1489, and the then Queen, Elizabeth of York, is not known to have played any part. By the time that Henry became Prince, in 1504, she was dead and there were no more princes of Wales within the period, the next being the eldest son of James I in 1610. The only Queen Consort to bear a son during the sixteenth century was Jane Seymour and she did not live to play any part in his upbringing. Elizabeth of York was protective of her elder daughter, Margaret, and is alleged to have persuaded her husband not to marry her for diplomatic reasons before the canonical age of co-habitation, which was 12. Margaret was actually 13 when she married James IV of Scotland in a purely political match and Elizabeth seems to have supported that – or at least she did not oppose it. A queen also continued, to some extent, to be defi ned by her own family. Catherine de Valois made little of her royal blood after her marriage and took as her second husband a mere household servant, while Margaret of Anjou was alternately bedevilled and rescued by hers. No one was allowed to forget that she was of the Ducal House of Anjou. Catherine of Aragon actually served as her father’s accredited ambassador in England between her marriages to Arthur and Henry and was the symbol of an alliance by which the King set great store in the early years of his reign. When he was trying to get rid of her in 1527, it was her family, in the person of the Emperor, Charles V, who stood in his way and forced him into one of the defi ning actions of his reign. However, paradoxically the two most important consort families were not