Mary Tudor Page 2

  Young Catherine was a small player in her father’s dynastic schemes, and the English alliance seemed attractive enough, so an agreement in principle was reached, and the child grew up to think of herself as the Princess of Wales, the betrothed of Arthur, heir to the crown of England. In fact, the situation was not quite so straightforward. The deaths of Catherine’s elder sister Isabella in childbed in 1493, and of her brother the Infante Juan in 1497, threw her father’s plans into disarray, and it seemed for a while as though she might have to be married off elsewhere. However, when her sister Juanna bore a healthy son to Philip, the son of the Emperor Maximilian, in 1500, and survived the experience, it seemed safe to allow Catherine to come to England. In 1501, at the age of seventeen, she reached London, to be greeted with the most lavish celebrations of which England was capable, and was wedded to the fifteenyear- old Arthur.[3] That marriage, which lasted barely six months, was to be the source of the crisis that was later to destroy Catherine’s life, and to inflict terrible damage upon her daughter Mary.

  Arthur died at Ludlow on 2 April 1502. It was said of him, as it had been said of the Infante Juan five years earlier, that premature and excessive sexual activity had proved fatal, but his death is more likely to have been caused by pneumonia. It later became a significant question whether the marriage had ever been consummated at all. Catherine had denied it, but by then she had good reason to claim that she had gone to her second husband as virgo intacta. Arthur apparently made adolescent boasts about the subject, but no certainty is possible. At the age of eighteen, Catherine had thus become a widow with uncertain prospects. Neither Henry VII nor Ferdinand wanted to end the connection that the marriage had established, and Henry had no desire to refund a substantial dowry, so there was immediate talk of her remarriage to Arthur’s younger brother, Henry. However, Henry was only eleven years old, and the propriety of such a marriage under canon law was uncertain. As a precaution, a dispensation was obtained from Pope Julius II, which, again as a precaution, assumed that the marriage had been consummated, since that would have constituted the greater impediment.[4] This was to cause a great deal of trouble in the future. Catherine’s mother, Isabella, was in favour of the marriage, but she died in November 1504, before young Henry had reached the minimum age of co-habitation, and that seriously altered the situation in Spain.

  Ferdinand was King of Aragon and had no title to the larger kingdom of Castile. Nor did Isabella give him one. At her death her heir was her elder daughter Juana (known as Joanna to the English), married to Philip of Burgundy and the mother of two sons. However, there were those in Castile who did not want the foreigner Philip as king, and the next heir was the currently unmarried Catherine. Since Ferdinand was also hoping to capitalise upon the anti-Burgundian feeling to secure some title for himself, the last thing he wanted was Catherine back in Spain. Meanwhile, Henry VII had gone off the whole idea of a second marriage, and caused his son to repudiate the agreement when he reached the age of fourteen in 1505. Catherine was left in limbo by these developments, and she consoled herself, with her few remaining Spanish servants, by multiplying her religious devotions. She was twenty-one, lonely and short of money.[5] In Spain, Philip and Juana secured their title, and Ferdinand was forced to retreat to Aragon, but in 1506 Philip died and Juana became (at least temporarily) deranged. This enabled Ferdinand to re-establish himself, and made him more reluctant than ever to welcome Catherine home. By this time she had convinced herself that it was the will of God that she should marry Prince Henry, and this gave her an adequate incentive to wait quietly while the king’s health deteriorated. On 21 April 1509 Henry VII died.

  Henry VIII was two months short of his eighteenth birthday, but a regency was never suggested. He became king, and one of his first acts was to marry his sister-in-law. Whether he had fancied her for some time, or heeded his father’s dying wish (as he claimed), his councillors were astounded and Catherine triumphantly vindicated. All the hypothetical objections – the question of consummation with Arthur (‘consanguinity’), his own repudiation of the marriage agreement – were simply swept aside. Ferdinand’s assent was taken for granted. They were married in a low-key ceremony at the house of the Franciscan Observant monks at Greenwich in early June, and crowned together on Midsummer’s Day. Catherine was twenty-four and, if her portraits are anything to go by, remarkably attractive. It was a time of great joy for her, and for the whole court, and within a few weeks she was pregnant. Henry, meanwhile, was intent on flexing his muscles in a different direction by picking a quarrel with Louis XII of France. The older councillors whom he had inherited from his father were appalled, but there was no gainsaying this magnificent young man, and his wife busied herself resurrecting the old alliance with her father. Not even Henry believed that he could fight the French on his own and Catherine became for a while his chief foreign-policy adviser.

  Things then began to go wrong. The Anglo-Spanish treaty was duly signed, but the queen’s child was born dead. With hindsight, this is more significant than it looked at the time. Stillbirths were not uncommon, and were not necessarily ominous. By May 1510 Catherine was pregnant again, and on New Year’s Day 1511 delivered an apparently healthy son, who was immediately christened ‘Henry’.[6] For a few weeks, as the king continued his preparations for war, his queen enjoyed the luxury of being the mother of the heir to the throne. The war duly proceeded according to plan, but Prince Henry did not. On 21 February he died, almost before the sounds of his splendid christening tournament had faded away. This time the royal couple were devastated, and a shadow fell between them. The conventional wisdom of the time was that infant deaths declared a constitutional weakness in the woman. Catherine redoubled her pious exercises, seeking for an explanation of how she could have offended the God who was afflicting her in this way. Henry went to war and, if court gossip is to be believed, to the beds of other women.

  However, their relationship was not seriously damaged. In the summer of 1513, while the king was campaigning in France, his queen acted as regent; and the forces led by the Earl of Surrey on her behalf won a more significant victory over the Scots at Flodden than Henry enjoyed over the French at the capture of Tournai. Nevertheless it was Henry, in a mood of romantic chivalry, who brought the token of his victory to lay at her feet. As the war was coming to an end in the summer of 1514, she conceived again. This time the outcome is less clear, but it appears that in December she suffered another stillbirth, this time of a boy. The omens were now distinctly bad and could not be ignored. There was no heir, and Catherine had failed again. She was nearly thirty, and her time was getting short.

  Catherine was also now less influential politically than she had been. Henry did not hold her responsible when her father Ferdinand signed a separate treaty with France in the summer of 1514, but he certainly felt betrayed.[7] He also had his own man, in the person of Thomas Wolsey, rapidly emerging as his closest and most influential adviser. Catherine was wise enough not to resent this openly, but her role as a de facto councillor was effectively over. As she was forced to retreat from the council chamber to the boudoir, the queen found herself challenged there as well. Henry probably did not consciously intend to revenge himself for Ferdinand’s defection by taking a mistress, but that is effectively what happened. Elizabeth Blount’s relationship with the king has a shadowy start, and we cannot be sure that the covert gossip of the time refers to her, but it may well have done. Threatened on all sides in the early part of 1515, and with a husband resting from his martial preoccupations, Catherine had only one weapon. In the late summer she became pregnant again. This time the rejoicings were muted, and anxiety was more obvious than expectation. However, on 18 February 1516, in the palace at Greenwich, a healthy child was born. Unfortunately, it was a girl, where every prophet who had ventured to pronounce had forecast a boy. A few days later she was christened with great pomp – and named Mary.[8]

  In spite of their undoubted disappointment, Henry and Catherine put on a great show o
f rejoicing. Successful procreation had restored their relationship, if not the queen’s political influence. A few days before Mary’s birth, Catherine’s father Ferdinand had died, and that precluded any possibility of her influencing Anglo-Spanish relations. His grandson, Charles of Ghent, succeeded to both crowns at the age of sixteen, nominally ruling Castile jointly with his mother, Juana, although she was now permanently confined as insane, and known as la loca (‘the mad’). Henry paraded his daughter at court, no doubt to demonstrate that she was a whole and perfect child, and referred to her as ‘a token of hope’. That was all very well for him. He was twenty-five and in the full vigour of youth. Catherine was thirty-one; she had endured at least four pregnancies, and her beauty was fading fast. It was the spring of 1518 before she conceived again, and this time expectation was again at fever pitch. Would this be the longed-for prince? On 9 November the queen was delivered again – of another daughter – and the only report we have does not say whether she was stillborn or died immediately after. Either way, the child did not survive, and although Catherine quickly recovered her health, this was to be her last conception. She was now thirty-three, and it is quite possible that she went through the menopause soon after. Nothing, of course, was said, and ostensibly the royal couple continued to hope for a male heir, but as time passed the prospect diminished. From Catherine’s point of view the pain of this situation was greatly increased by the fact that in 1519 Elizabeth Blount bore Henry a healthy son, whom the king immediately acknowledged, naming him Henry Fitzroy.

  A bastard, however, did not solve the succession problem, and Mary emerged from infancy into childhood still the heir to the throne. She had unwittingly performed her first duty as early as 1518, when the Anglo-French treaty that was embraced within the wider settlement known as the Treaty of London contained a provision for her to marry the dauphin of France, an infant even younger than herself. Neither party took this very seriously. Although the provision depended on Mary being Henry’s heir, that was only in default of sons, which Henry at the age of twenty-seven was not really willing to contemplate. The person who did take this entente seriously, however, was Charles of Spain. Although he was a signatory of the Treaty of London, with lands in the Low Countries as well as the Iberian peninsula, he was always likely to need leverage against the French, and that Henry was uniquely placed to provide. When Charles became Holy Roman Emperor on the death of his paternal grandfather Maximilian in 1519, and thus held lands almost encircling France, the likelihood of renewed conflict sharply increased. By the time that Francis I of France and Henry held their planned meeting at the field of Cloth of Gold in 1520, their friendship was already souring, and within a few weeks Wolsey had negotiated on his master’s behalf a new treaty with Charles that effectively abrogated the earlier treaty with France, and prepared the way for a new war.[9] Mary now found herself, at the age of four, with a new fiancé in the person of the twenty-year-old Emperor. In 1522, when he visited England, she met him for the first and only time, and played the virginals for his entertainment. In later years she was to remember the solemn young man who might have been her husband with a mixture of affection and awe, while he remembered her as a dainty, pretty child, anxious to please.

  MARY’S MARRIAGE TO CHARLES V

  A) THE TREATY, 25 AUGUST 1521, BRUGES

  Articuli sub beneplacito SDN concepti pro arctiori foedera inter Stm. Caesarem et Regen Angliae et Franciae innuendo …

  [Clause 11] The Pope shall, before the ratification of this league, grant dispensation for the marriage between the Emperor and the King of England’s daughter, Mary, notwithstanding the espousals already made between the Emperor and the French King’s daughter, and between Mary and the Dauphin.

  [Letters and Papers, iii, 1508. BL Cotton MS Galba B VII, f 102]

  B) RATIFICATION AND PROVISO, 14 SEPTEMBER 1521

  Ratification of the treaty of marriage concluded 25th August between Margaret of Savoy* and, John de Bergis on one part and Thomas Wolsey on the other; with a proviso made 26th August touching Mary’s marriage portion in the event of a male heir being born to the King of England. In the case of such issue it was agreed that the marriage portion, which had been agreed at 400,000† crowns should be increased to 600, 000. It is by this agreed between the parties that this augmentation, although promised to the Emperor to satisfy his subjects, shall not in reality ever be exacted. Brussels.

  [Letters and Papers … of the Reign of Henry VIII, iii, 1571. TNA E30/868.]

  * Charles’ sister, Regent of the Low Countries.

  † French and Imperial crowns were worth 6s 4d sterling.

  As befitted her rank, Mary was given her own household from birth. This was a modest establishment of seven women and three men, presided over at first by Elizabeth Denton, and then by Margaret Bryan.[10] Four of the women were described as ‘Rockers’, which identifies the whole set up as a glorified nursery. There must have been separate provision for service departments, because the overall cost of her establishment was £1,400 a year, but they are not listed and it seems that the child was not expected to spend any length of time apart from her parents. By the time that she was three, however, and espoused to the dauphin, this was not considered adequate. Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, was given the position of ‘lady governess’. Mary’s chamber, the ‘above-stairs’ component of her household, now consisted of two men (the treasurer and the chaplain), five gentlewomen and six gentlemen, and to these were added twenty-seven other men, variously described as ‘valets’, ‘grooms of the chamber’ and ‘grooms of the household’.[11] Perhaps the latter were intended to provide some of the household service when Mary was, as frequently happened by this time, on her own for a while.

  The year 1519 clearly marked a stage in her emergence from infancy, and the increase of dignity may have been connected with the appearance on the scene of her illegitimate half-brother Henry Fitzroy. In 1522, when she was six and her schooling was just beginning, politics shook this domestic environment. The Countess of Salisbury was suspected of collusion in the alleged treasons of the Duke of Buckingham, and was removed from her post, although no other action was taken against her. In her place came Sir Philip Calthorpe as chamberlain, and his wife Jane as governess. A new chaplain was appointed, and fifteen pages were added to the ‘below-stairs’ establishment.

  Whether the chaplain was also expected to act as a tutor is not entirely clear. Catherine seems to have assumed responsibility for her daughter’s first steps in literacy herself, although whether on a regular or occasional basis is not clear either.[12] It used to be thought that the distinguished Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives performed this function for a time, but it is now believed that he confined himself to writing The Education of a Christian Woman at Catherine’s request and other works such as the Satellitium sive Symbola, which contains a dedication to Mary. The Education was certainly aimed at the princess, and if his suggested curriculum was followed it would have involved a strong diet of biblical and classical reading – the latter suitably selected to protect her chaste youth. Vives was to some extent ahead of his time in taking the education of a girl seriously at all, but what he suggested was not particularly revolutionary, and certainly not intended to give Mary the impression that she had a masculine intellect.[13] There was much emphasis upon chastity, piety and humility, as befitted a future royal wife, but nothing that might have prepared her for being a ruler herself – except of course a sound grounding in classical Latin, the foundation stone of all learning and much business. If Catherine had given up all hope of bearing a son, that is not apparent in the education that she provided for Mary between 1522 and 1525. Probably, menopause or no menopause, she continued to believe in the power of fervent prayer to deliver what she and the king both so desperately wanted. Although Elizabeth Blount had been succeeded by Mary Boleyn in Henry’s favours, much to Catherine’s chagrin, there is no suggestion until much later that the royal couple had given up sleeping together – and while
there was copulation there was hope.

  Henry was proud of his daughter. At first she was shown off to fascinated diplomats as a perfect specimen of childhood, and as soon as she had talents to display they were demonstrated to a similar audience. She does not seem to have been particularly precocious, except in music, but she danced prettily and had, apparently, a beguiling gravity of demeanour. Noting her absence from the festivities at Calais in 1520, Francis sent three of his gentlemen to find out why, under the guise of paying their respects to their future queen. Mary received them at Richmond with ‘the most goodly countenance, proper communication and pleasant pastime … her young and tender age considered’.[14] She was four. Henry insisted, and Catherine made no attempt to demur, that Mary should be brought up as an English princess. As we have seen, her grandmother Isabella – the iron lady of Castile – was not held up as a role model, although it might have been more appropriate if she had been. Catherine had lived in England for over twenty years, and never returned to Spain after 1501. She retained some Spanish servants, but she spoke English perfectly – although it was sometimes convenient to pretend that she did not – and there is no certainty that Mary ever learned her mother’s native tongue. Several years later, when both were in disfavour, it was claimed that they exchanged notes in Spanish, to deceive their attendants; and when Mary was queen she seems to have understood her husband’s tongue, but to have spoken it very haltingly. It is probably safest to assume that she picked up a little from Catherine’s conversations with her confessor and apothecary, without ever being specifically taught it. French she did learn, under the tuition of Giles Duwes, and later she spoke and wrote fluently in that language.