Mary Tudor Read online

  Between 1520 and 1525, Mary can be glimpsed occasionally in the diplomatic correspondence, usually in words of studied flattery. In 1524, in spite of her engagement to Charles, there was talk of her marrying the eightyear- old James V of Scotland. This was favoured by James’ mother, Margaret, Henry VIII’s sister, but the negotiations came to nothing. More intimately, some of her treasurer’s accounts survive, showing her giving and receiving presents, and occasionally giving alms, usually when she was travelling from place to place and was presumably more accessible. However, there is no sign of her ever having had companions of her own age – unless some of the so-called ‘ladies’ of her privy chamber were really children.

  In later years, both her brother Edward and sister Elizabeth were taught in small ‘school rooms’ of contemporaries, but there is no sign that Mary was schooled in this way. As a child she seems to have been unusually close to both her parents, and her health was cared for as carefully as the knowledge of the time permitted; but of a peer group there is no sign. This may be merely a defect in the records, but a lonely childhood might help to explain the difficulty that she was to have in later life in establishing relationships. ‘Cherishing’, as the contemporary wisdom ran, ‘marreth sons but utterly destroyeth daughters.’ It is possible that, until the age of about nine, Mary was cherished, in other words coddled and kept apart from other children.

  In 1525 a major change took place in the young princess’s circumstances. Henry, it would appear, was beginning to despair of ever having a son by Catherine. She had not conceived for nearly seven years, and it was becoming increasingly obvious, even to her, that her childbearing days were over. He was thirty-four, but she was now forty, and ageing rapidly. Prayer was a great solace, but perhaps she was not worthy of the miracle that would now be necessary. The king had to do something about the succession. As things stood, with Mary betrothed to the Emperor – and now within about three years of the minimum age of cohabitation – if Henry were to die, England would become a part of the burgeoning Habsburg empire, along with Germany, the Low Countries, Spain and most of Italy. Only if Mary were to die while Henry was alive, leaving a son, would England retain her independence. The idea that a ruling queen could marry and maintain the autonomy of her kingdom was one whose time had not yet come. Even the formidable Isabella of Spain had not achieved that. Henry therefore had three options. He could accept the situation as it was, and take whatever steps were possible to secure English interests; he could attempt to legitimate his bastard son, Henry Fitzroy, and settle the succession on him; or he could try to repudiate his wife, Catherine, and start again.

  In 1525 Henry had not quite screwed up the courage to face these options, but Cardinal Wolsey, his chancellor since 1515, was urging the need for him to get a stronger grip on the government of Wales and the north, and this suggested a way ahead. There were already royal councils, both in the north and in the marches, but they were moribund and ineffective.[15] Wolsey proposed that each should be reconstituted, with a royal child as its nominal head to establish the monarch’s presence, but staffed by efficient servants of his own choosing. On 18 June Henry Fitzroy, aged about six, was created Duke of Richmond, and despatched to Middleham in Yorkshire with a large household and a new council. He was not legitimated, but the choice of title was significant and, in spite of his tender years, he now had status. Catherine, we are told, was outraged. At about the same time Mary, equipped with a similar establishment, was sent to the west to ‘bear the face of the king’ in Wales and the marches. She was not, however, formally constituted Princess of Wales, which would have confirmed her position as heir to the throne.[16] Henry was keeping his options open, and at the same time separating the child from what he probably saw as the overweening influence of her mother. With hindsight this looks like an ominous move, but at the time it was a sensible precaution. If the queen was also annoyed by this, she was wise enough not to show it.

  THE HOUSEHOLD IN WALES 18 August 1525

  THE NAMES OF ALL THE LADIES AND GENTLEWOMEN WHO ARE TO ACCOMPANY THE PRINCESS INTO WALES, WITH THE QUANTITY OF THE BLACK VELVET ALLOWED TO EACH

  Lady Salisbury; Lady Katherine Grey; Mrs Katherine Montacue, Mrs Elizabeth Poole; Mrs. Constance Poole; Mrs Anne Knevett; Mrs Dannet; Mrs Baker; Mrs Cecill Dabridgecourt; Mrs Frances Elmer; MrsAnne Rede; Mrs Marie Wyncter; Mrs Peter; Mrs Anne Dannet and Mrs Anne Darrell. Mrs Parker and Mrs Geynes are to have black damask. [Memorandum in the margin of the delivery of the velvet to each of the ladies, by Mr. Leg,, J. Scutte, Mr. Wheeler and Ric. Hage. Signed by Wolsey.]

  [Letters and Papers … of the Reign of Henry VIII, iv, 1577. TNA SP1/35, pp. 261-2.]

  A household and council numbering some 304 individuals was created for Mary in July 1525. The domestic establishment was again headed by the Countess of Salisbury, now restored to favour, and a new schoolmaster was appointed in the person of Dr Richard Fetherstone. Fetherstone was a competent scholar, and his main duty was to work on the princess’s Latin style. Separate instructions were also given for her music, diet and physical recreation. The council was headed by John Veysey, Bishop of Exeter (who had held the position earlier), and was equipped with a formidable range of commissions to enable it to function in just about every judicial capacity within the marches.

  Mary and her entourage assembled at Wolsey’s residence of The More, near Rickmansworth, in early August, and set off from there on the 12th. They appear to have travelled by a circuitous route, via Woburn and Reading, reaching Thornbury Castle in Gloucestershire on or about the 24th. Mary’s itinerary over the next year or so can be approximately tracked.[17] The council also moved about a good deal, sometimes being in the same place as the princess, but often not. She seems to have spent most of the latter part of 1525 at Tewkesbury, while the council was at Worcester, Hereford and (probably) Shrewsbury. Her presence was not really necessary for its work, except on major ceremonial occasions. She seems to have inaugurated her regime with a ceremonial entry into Gloucester in September, but did not stay long, and does not appear to have repeated the process in other towns. Although Ludlow was the theoretical base of the council, neither the council nor Mary appear to have spent more than a few days there, in May 1526 – probably owing to the fact that the building work in progress there was still incomplete.

  Very little is known about how Mary occupied her time during these peregrinations, although it can be presumed that her strict regime of schoolwork and exercise continued. Her offerings at shrines or religious houses are sometimes recorded, but how she relaxed, and with whom, is not clear. She turned ten in February 1526, and seems to have been treated throughout as a small adult rather than a child. She apparently enjoyed hawking, and it may have been at this time that she developed her taste for small-scale gambling with dice or cards; but of play in any childish sense there is no mention at all. She had sixteen ladies, some of whom may have been close to her in age, under the watchful eye of the Countess of Salisbury, who was old enough to have been her grandmother. All were strictly chaperoned, and it is highly unlikely that Mary ever encountered any boys of even approximately her own age. As a result she grew up deeply suspicious of the men with whom she had to deal, and had a poor understanding of their motivation and psychology. She wrote some formal letters during this period in the Welsh marches, a few of which have survived, but they tell us nothing beyond the fact that she was diligent in her studies, and performed official tasks as requested. After about a year, in September 1526, she was allowed to travel east for a reunion with her parents. Whose idea this was, we do not know, but the suggestion probably came from the lady governess, and the king put himself out to accommodate it. They met at Stony Stratford in Buckinghamshire on about 25 September, and spent some two weeks together there and at Ampthill in Bedfordshire before she returned to Hartlebury, near Worcester, about the middle of October.[18]

  Mary’s tour of duty as princess was, however, coming to an end. Her entourage was hugely expensive, costing (with the neces
sary repairs to relevant houses) over £4,500 during the first year, and it was probably not clear to either Wolsey or the king that such a heavy expenditure was justified. At some uncertain date towards the end of 1526 she paid a brief visit to Coventry, and appears to have kept her Christmas at Bewdley, but by the middle of February the decision had been taken to recall her. There is no record of this decision, but she reached Abingdon in Oxfordshire on 17 February, from thence proceeding to Windsor and London. Options were kept open for a while, and a part of her household was kept on somewhere in the marches until 1528 (the accounts for payment do not state where); but it was then stood down and Mary did not go back to Wales.

  Expense was not the only reason for bringing this experiment to an end. Henry’s involvement in war with France, for which he had signed up with the Emperor in 1521, was something of a fiasco. The campaign of 1523 fizzled out ignominiously, and the king was too short of money to undertake anything significant in 1524. Early in 1525 Charles inflicted a crushing defeat on Francis at the battle of Pavia, and captured him. Henry then had the audacity to suggest a partition of the kingdom of France, with himself receiving a large share for doing precisely nothing. When the king attempted to raise a war fund by means of a forced loan – the so-called Amicable Grant – the result was another fiasco.[19] Charles was not only not interested, he was mortally offended. In 1526 he signed a separate treaty with France and married the Infanta Isabella of Portugal, a lady of more suitable years than his English fiancée.

  Henry had been expecting such an outcome for some time, but the temptation to make a grievance out of this repudiation was too good to miss. The result was a hectic round of diplomacy as Wolsey attempted, with French assistance, to put together a coalition against the now over-powerful Emperor. Francis, although he had been constrained to leave his sons in Imperial hands as the price of his own release, had no intention of abiding by the treaty that he had been forced to sign. In May 1526 the League of Cognac came into existence, although England was not at first a member. Anglo-French negotiations continued, and early in 1527 a deal was brokered that would have involved a marriage between Mary, then aged eleven, and Francis himself, aged thirty-three and currently a widower. The King of France did not have a good reputation where women were concerned, and it is reasonable to suppose that Catherine was not consulted over this proposal. In any case, although she had little leverage by this time, such influence as she still had would have been exercised in favour of her nephew Charles. Early in 1527 Francis proposed to send a discreet mission to inspect the princess as his intended bride, and this was perhaps the most important reason for summoning her back from Wales.

  Another reason may well have been the deteriorating state of her parents’ own marriage. It was allegedly the negotiation for a marriage between Mary and Francis that first raised the vexed question of the princess’s status. The French envoys are supposed to have asked for reassurances about Mary’s legitimacy in the light of the bar of consanguinity that had existed between her parents at the time of their marriage. Pope Julius II’s dispensation of 1503 was known both in England and in France, but its sufficiency was doubted. Whether it was indeed the French envoys who had raised this doubt is uncertain, but it is clear that somebody had, and the king, who in certain moods was extremely superstitious, was becoming convinced that he had made a terrible mistake. In the Book of Leviticus, 20th chapter, it was decreed that if a man took his brother’s wife to himself it was an offence against God, and the couple would be childless. Preoccupied with Catherine’s misfortunes in childbearing, Henry overlooked the fact that they were not actually childless. Wanting to be convinced, he allowed himself to be persuaded that the original Hebrew had said ‘they shall be without sons’.[20]

  By early 1527 Henry’s state of mind had also been influenced by more practical considerations. Mary was an undergrown scrap of a child. The king was not yet old, and she might very well wed and bear sons in his lifetime, but it was not to be counted upon, and the thought that England might fall into the hands of a foreign dynasty was deeply distasteful, not only to Henry but also to his nobility. Catherine, oblivious to English sensibilities on this subject, simply could not see his problem. On the other hand, legitimating Henry Fitzroy was a highly uncertain proceeding. His mother, Elizabeth Blount, was no longer available even if the king had been disposed to marry her (which he was not). Any other process of legitimation would depend upon a special grace from Rome, and even then would be insecure. If Henry had ever considered his illegitimate son as a candidate for the succession, he had ruled him out by 1527. It was becoming increasingly obvious that Catherine would have to go.

  There were apparently only two ways in which this could be accomplished. If the queen were to take herself to a nunnery, the marriage would be effectively terminated, irrespective of its earlier validity. Mary would remain Henry’s legitimate heir, but would be superseded by any son born to a subsequent union. Given that Catherine must have been aware that (miracles apart) her childbearing was over, and given her conspicuous piety, this was not an unreasonable option. The alternative was to secure an annulment from the pope on the grounds of consanguinity. Henry unwisely foreclosed the first option (which would have required his wife’s cooperation) by brusquely confronting her in July 1527 with the news that they had never been properly married. This was a direct challenge to Catherine’s own conviction that God had inspired Henry to wed her in 1509, in answer to years of fervent prayer. Compromise or an amicable arrangement were now alike impossible, and only an annulment offered a way ahead. Unfortunately Henry had just quarrelled violently with the Emperor Charles, who was Catherine’s nephew, and Charles had the pope by the throat after his army had inadvertently sacked Rome in May 1527.[21] By June, an amended version of Julius II’s brief, making good the alleged deficiencies of the original, had turned up in Spain and was known to Wolsey, who found himself confronted with an impossible task. In the teeth of the Emperor’s opposition, and of his unchallengeable ascendancy in Rome, he had to persuade Pope Clement VII (not a robust or courageous man) to overturn his predecessor’s edict, and thus to call the whole authority of papal judgements into question. Clement could, of course, have done so, but whether he would was quite a different question.

  It was into this developing crisis that Mary returned. She received the French envoys at Greenwich on St George’s Day, 23 April, speaking to them both in Latin and in fluent French, also entertaining them, as was her wont, on the virginals. They were impressed by her accomplishments and by her seemly gravity, but they also observed that she was ‘so thin, spare and small as to make it impossible to be married for the next three years’.[22] The French king could not afford to wait that long, and the agreement that was eventually reached was for an engagement between the princess and Francis’ second son, the Duke of Orléans. Knowledge of this uncongenial arrangement had already reached Catherine when she had her confrontation with her husband in July, and had done nothing to sweeten her mood. She seems to have been ignorant of the fact, but the complex situation that was then developing was made worse by Henry’s developing relationship with Anne Boleyn.

  Anne was the younger sister of the king’s earlier mistress, Mary Boleyn, now happily married off, and seems to have come to his attention at some time during 1526. In spite of the intensity that it later developed, this was not at first a passionate infatuation, and seems to have grown gradually out of a charade of courtly love. In June Anne was ill of the ‘sweat’ and Henry was worried, but it was not clear at this point to anyone (except perhaps the parties themselves) that Catherine’s place in her husband’s affections had been usurped by one of her own ladies. However, even if she had known, the queen could hardly have been more obdurate. Realising what Wolsey was now about on the king’s behalf, she sent a secret message to Charles, begging him to use all his influence to frustrate the English moves in the curia (the papal court). In the circumstances, he hardly needed any urging.

  As she emerged
from childhood, Mary was thus caught in a domestic and political firestorm for which she was ill-equipped. Before moving to Wales, she had been urged by her mother to study diligently with Dr Fetherstone, but most of the evidence for her having done so is indirect, in the form of commendations from others – most notably from Erasmus. Almost the only direct evidence is that she translated a prayer of St Thomas Aquinas into English, while the French envoys of 1527 testified to the success of Mary’s French tutor, Giles Duwes. As far as her health was concerned, evidence of sickness during her stay in the marches is very scant, although she was moved from time to time to avoid infection. However, of her personality at this stage in her life nothing very much emerges. She seems to have been a biddable child who answered to expectations, diligent but not noticeably bright, and not apparently showing much curiosity about the world around her. Although well known in some quarters by the summer of 1527, the rupture between her parents was not understood outside the court, and Mary seems for some time to have been protected from its implications. It was not until 1529, when she was thirteen, that she found herself in the painful position of having to decide how she was going to react.