Bloody Mary

by Carolly Erickson

  Six companies of masquers danced in turn after the dining tables were cleared away: boys in white satin, men in long black satin mantles and white wigs and beards, and a group in “long gowns with tall stockings and short bolstered breeches.” In the midst of the masquers Francis appeared, in a costume which perfectly evoked his magical and sacramental character as king. He wore a long, close-fitting white satin gown made in the shape of a cross like the white robe of Jesus in a religious painting. His youth and dark hair and beard heightened his resemblance to the familiar image of the savior, and his handsome face and solemn bearing created a profound and disturbing effect. Fastened to the white gown were “compasses and dials”—occult symbols—whose meaning eluded the onlookers and added to his air of mystery. The appearance of a group of girls dressed in low-cut bodices in “the Italian fashion” handing around wine and sugared confections broke the spell, and the evening ended with dancing and drinking. Fortunately, the ambassadors wrote, the canvas ceiling had been well waxed so that only a few drops of the heavy rain falling on the pavilion dropped on the heads of the guests. Francis’ immense investment in the banquet, which they estimated at 450,000 crowns, was protected.

  Midway in these ambassadorial exchanges occurred the last of Kath-erine’s great disappointments. Her child had been much hoped for. “God grant she may give birth to a son,” Giustinian wrote home to Venice in the last month of her pregnancy, “so that having an heir male, the king if necessary may not be hindered embarking on any great undertaking soever.” A son would make certain that the crown would not pass to Mary and, through her, to her future husband the dauphin. A son would anchor the dynasty, reassure the king and satisfy his subjects.

  In her eighth month Katherine gave birth to a stillborn daughter. Giustinian pronounced the misfortune “vexatious.” “Never had this entire kingdom ever so anxiously desired anything as it did a prince,” he declared, “it appearing to everyone that the state would be safe should his Majesty leave an heir male, whereas, without a prince, they are of a contrary opinion.”7 Katherine was heartbroken, Henry temporarily glum. The betrothal of the princess was a calculated risk. Henry was gambling that long before the dauphin reached marriageable age his claim on the English throne in right of his wife would be invalidated by Henry’s son or sons. For the time being, he had lost his wager. Giustinian expressed his private belief that if the outcome of Katherine’s pregnancy had been known before the treaty was signed and the marriage promises exchanged, the entire diplomatic venture would have been abandoned. It is “the sole fear of this kingdom,” he observed, “that it may pass through this marriage into the power of the French.”

  IV

  And Iwar a maydyn,

  As many one ys,

  For all the golde in England

  I wold not do amysse.

  Katherine’s stillbirth meant that Mary would not, as her father hoped, fade into the background, eclipsed by a brother. Instead she remained an important focus of political attention—so important that her health was the subject of the most assiduous attention at the French court. Through her betrothal to the dauphin Mary had become the living embodiment of peace between England and France; as such it was important that she stay healthy. Queen Claude took to asking the English ambassador Thomas Boleyn how the princess was every time they met, and diplomats and courtiers began to exchange oblique inquiries about “whether the princess had been sick lately” as a matter of course.1 A few months after her espousals a rumor circulated in Paris that she was dead, causing a few days of confused alarm, but before long Boleyn was able to quiet the disconcerted courtiers with the assurance that Mary was in perfect health.

  The size and expense of her household now reflected her diplomatic importance. Before she was three years old the cost of maintaining her establishment had risen to fourteen hundred pounds, and an inventory of her household goods included enough hangings, bedding and other furnishings for a sizable apartment in the palace. Listed in the inventory along with the tapestries, rugs, featherbeds, linen, brassware and pewter basins were the necessary fixtures of a household constantly on the move: five thousand hooks and two thousand crochets for hanging and rehang-ing the tapestries, hammers for driving the hooks into the walls and nailing shut the lids of chests and coffers, dozens of yards of canvas for covering loaded carts and rope for securing bundles and tying the canvas in place.2 Included too was a miniature throne—a little chair upholstered in cloth of gold and velvet—with a golden cloth of estate to be suspended over it and small gold cushions to go under the princess’ feet.

  By age three Mary had made herself the darling of her relatives and Henry’s courtiers. At New Year’s in 1519 she was showered with gifts—a gold spoon from Katherine’s close friend Lady Devonshire, a gold pomander from her aunt Mary, two smocks from Lady Mountjoy, wife of Katherine’s chamberlain, and from Wolsey a handsome gold cup. She was beginning to take part in the life of the court now, and was dressed up and shown around the room at banquets and other state occasions. She joined in family ceremonies of all kinds, and when her cousin Frances Brandon was born in the summer, Mary was called upon to be her godmother.3

  That the king kept a close watch on his daughter at this time is evident from a letter his secretary Richard Pace wrote to Wolsey in July of 1518. Henry and Katherine were staying at Wolsey’s estate of the More, and spending the long summer days hunting. Sometimes they rode together, sometimes the queen rode alone the four miles to the little hunting park on Sir John Pechy’s estate that was her favorite. Neither of them returned until late in the evening, and it was after dark on the night of July 17 that Henry heard the news that one of Mary’s servants was sick with “a hot ague.” Mary had not come to the More with her parents, but was only two days’ ride away, and Henry and Katherine received frequent messages from her household. Reports of small-scale outbreaks of both plague and the sweating sickness had been reaching the court all summer, and Henry was doubtless worried that the “hot ague” might be the sweat. He quickly told his secretary to write to Mary’s servant Richard Sydnour ordering him to bring her to the More by way of Bisharn Abbey, skirting the known infected areas. At the same time he told Pace to write Wolsey, who was in charge of all household affairs, asking him to work out safe itineraries for both Henry and Mary for the rest of the summer, and giving suggested routes.

  Though he saw his daughter from time to time Henry’s concern for Mary was usually expressed at a distance. Intimacy between the princess and her royal parents was not built up through daily contact as in less exalted families, but through occasional visits, exchanges of gifts and of money, letters and messages carried back and forth by household servants. In her earliest years Mary spent the greater part of her time surrounded by her gentlewomen and by Margaret Pole, countess of Salisbury, a long-faced, plain featured woman who in time became as dear to Mary as a grandmother.

  Her parents moved through her life with the impermanence of pleasant dreams, Katherine in her ash-colored court dress or her hunting skirts, her face always bright with laughter, Henry looming tali and strong in his velvets and jeweled caps. Mary was with them longest at holidays and in the seasons of panic during her second and third summers, but even then she saw them when they sent for her and not when she needed them. And she saw them often from the far end of the banquet hall, or looking out a window at the tiltyard. She may have been allowed to watch the pageant celebrating the French peace treaty in October of 1518, at which knights dressed as Turks and Christians fought an apocalyptic mock combat in front of a mountainous artificial “rock of peace” representing harmony among the European states. But there is no record that she was there. More likely on that evening Henry sent word ordering the princess dressed in her most splendid clothes and jewels, hugged her and carried her once around the room in his arms, and then gave her to an attendant gentlewoman to be put to bed.

  Henry certainly admired and cherished his daughter—when he thought about her—and he was capable of a sent
imental affection for her that reappeared at intervals throughout his life. But his idea of fatherly behavior was to be boisterous and demonstrative with his daughter for a few moments and then leave her in other hands. He saw to it that they were capable hands, but that was all. He made certain she was well cared for, but made no effort to get to know her or to involve himself in her life as she grew older. There would be no confidential intimacy between Henry and Mary. For that he needed not a daughter but a son.

  Elizabeth Blount first came to Henry’s court as a young girl sometime after the birth of the New Year’s boy. A niece of Lord Mountjoy, she was blonde and very beautiful, and became one of the queen’s maids of honor during the period when Katherine was vainly trying each year to produce a son. Elizabeth soon became “Bessie” to the king and his gentlemen, and was an especial favorite of Charles Brandon. Her beauty was put to use to adorn the pageants and revels, and at a court where graceful dancers and clear singing voices were at a premium Bessie Blount danced and sang extraordinarily well.

  Bessie was still in her teens when she became Henry’s mistress. She was not the first, of course. Beyond the king’s indiscretion with the duke of Buckingham’s sister there had been rumors of a Flemish mistress during the 1513 campaign, and dozens of the hrief or lasting courtly flirtations which were a little more than an extension of good manners. But Bessie was different. She was certainly the most beautiful girl, if not the most intelligent or fascinating, at Henry’s court. His association with her lasted for several years, not merely a few days or weeks. And most important, she bore him a son.

  The boy was born sometime in 1519, when Mary was three years old.Bessie left Katherine’s service when the signs of her pregnancy became an outrage to the queen—for like everyone else she knew very well who the child’s father was—and went to a monastery in the country for her delivery, Her child was christened Henry, with the honorific surname Fitzroy. Bessie herself was henceforth known at court by the unofficial title “mother of the king’s son,” and out of gratitude Henry arranged for her to marry a substantial gentleman, Sir Gilbert Talboys. The king’s liaison with Bessie did not continue after the young Henry’s birth, but Henry and Bessie remained linked through their son, and to Katherine’s immense displeasure both Lady Talboys and her child were revered almost as if they had become part of the royal line. Certainly many observers assumed that, if katherine had no son of her own, the king’s bastard would rule in place of his legitimate daughter. And to keep this possibility open, Henry gave his infant son a princely household and a succession of titles that gave him every appearance of being heir to the throne,

  In Mary’s young childhood Henry VIII was at the apex of his popularity, He had taken the ideal of chivalric monarchy to heights undreamed of by his medieval predecessors. He had led an army to victory in France; he ruled a turbulent but adoring people; he had proven himself to be among the wealthiest and most generous of European rulers. Whether they glimpsed him in his red-plumed helmet and golden armor covered with little golden bells, laughing and throwing the bells to Maximilian’s soldiers at the siege of Thérouanne, or riding to the hunt with the entire court at his heels, Henry captured and held the admiring attention of his contemporaries as no earlier king had done. His reign was unfolding as a vast drama in which he played the starring role. His love of costumes and of surprise changes of character, his taste for theatrical spectacles, his constant effort to be unpredictable, to do the unexpected both in his court and in affairs of state, fascinated all who came near him. Henry forced himself on the consciousness of his age and held his central place there until the very end of his life. In a remarkable feat of sustained image-building, he was re-creating the English monarchy in his own likeness.

  Mary’s childhood was spent in Henry’s giant shadow. There was a total identification, in the popular mind, between father and daughter, but Mary was seen as the king’s adored plaything, another ornament like his huge jewel-studded admiral’s whistle or his collar of enormous diamonds. His nickname for her denoted a precious adornment to his court: he called her his pearl, “the greatest pearl in the kingdom.” The name aptly conveyed her worth in Henry’s eyes. She was a treasure to be protected, hoarded, and, when the time came, spent to procure a lasting diplomatic advantage. That she might some day succeed her father was no more than an alarming improbability. And so throughout her childhood she was groomed, conditioned and taught not how to rule England, but how to make a successful transition from daughter to wife—to move from ornamenting her father’s court to adorning that of her future husband. Central to this conditioning was Mary’s formal education, which taught her to see herself as a weak and inferior being who could redeem her inherent sinfulness only by an attitude of subservience and vigilant self-denial. The contrast between her gloriously successful father and her admired yet repressed self pervaded Mary’s childhood, especially during her formative years.

  This contrast was heightened by the fact that she saw her father, as a rule, only on favored occasions. From about the age of three Mary saw her parents only at Easter and Christmas; during the long months in between she rode in her litter from Windsor to Hanworth to Richmond to Greenwich—to wherever, at Wolsey’s order, fresh rushes had been laid and the rooms “sweetened” for the princess.4 Christmas became the high point of her year, for then she not only visited her father and mother but celebrated the holiday with twelve days of feasting, dancing and masques climaxed by the arrival of New Year’s gifts. At her fourth Christmas a company of children performed a play for Mary, under the direction of the royal dramatist John Heywood. In the following year she was allowed her own Lord of Misrule—one of her household valets, John Thurgood—who planned and presented entertainments with morris dancers, carillons and hobbyhorses. For Mary’s sixth Christmas Thurgood outdid himself. Mary’s Christmas this year at Ditton was a miniature version of Henry’s great festivities at nearby Windsor. Her Christmas feast, like his, featured a gilded and painted boar’s head; her mummers appeared in visors and armor, rabbit skins and tails. Her nine morris dancers wore ten dozen tinkling bells, and one of her “disguisings” required “straw to cover twelve men.” Another entertainment was a gory mock battle whose props included twelve crossbows, gunpowder, four gunners, two dozen morris pikes and “a man to kill a calf behind a cloth.” Her New Year’s gifts were becoming more costly each year: a gold cross from the countess of Devonshire, twelve pairs of shoes from Richard Weston, a tall gold salt cellar set with pearls from Wolsey, and from Henry a standing cup of silver gilt overflowing with coins.5 And from “a poor woman of Greenwich” a rosemary bush (one of the Tudor symbols) hung with gold spangles.

  We know very little about the dim world of Tudor childhood. For Mary it meant the loud noises and crowded halls of the great palaces, the long silences and green vistas of the smaller manors, candlelight, torchlight, black darkness. It meant journeys through the countryside at all seasons, barge rides from Richmond to Greenwich and back again, animals, sudden rain showers and the sweet scent of cherries and strawberries from the gardens of Hanworth and Windsor, It was prayers, priests, music, her jewels, her little throne. It was not a world of indulgent parents or nurses. Visitors to England in the late fifteenth century were struck by the terror children showed in the presence of their parents. Even as adults English men and women stood in nervous silence when their parents entered a room, and did not speak until they were spoken to. Children were governed through fear as a matter of course, and if they failed to obey they were slapped and beaten until they did. Thomas More, who wrote proudly that if he flogged his children at all it was with the tail of a peacock, was famous for his gentleness, but the attitude of his friend Richard Whytford was more typical of his time. Whytford composed a little prayer for children to repeat to their mothers every morning:

  If I lie, backbite or steal

  If I will curse, scorn, mock or swear,

  If I chide, fight, strive or threat,

  Then am I worthy t
o be beat.

  Good mother or mistress mine,

  If any of these nine

  I trespass to your Knowyng;

  With a new rod and a fine

  Early naked before I dine

  Amend me with a scourging.6

  If children were taught to fear the consequences of disobedience, they were kept in terror of the uncontrollable world of the occult. They were told to “double the thumb”—to enclose their thumb under their clenched fingers—in the presence of danger, for this shape of the hand resembled the Hebrew name of God. Their imaginations were opened to the invisible troupe of menacing beings which wandered the night or waited in the forest. The list of these unseen tormentors was enormous: spirits, witches, hags, satyrs, pans, sylens, tritons, centaurs, dwarfs, giants, imps, calcars, nymphs, incubi, hobgoblins, Robin Goodfellow, the spoorn, the mare, the man in the oak, the hell-wain, the firedrake, the puckle, and the terrifying “Boneless.” Ruling them all was the ultimate horror, compounded of all the animals children fear most: the Devil, “having horns on his head, fire in his mouth, and a tail in his breech, eyes like a Bason, fangs like a Dog, claws like a Boar, a skin like a Niger, and a voice roaring like a Lion, whereby we start and are afraid when we hear one cry Bough!”7