Bloody Mary

by Carolly Erickson

The business of the court was to dispense justice, but it also had a ceremonial function. The throne in the presence chamber, attended at all times by at least twenty ushers, waiters and grooms, bore the charisma of majesty, and suitors to court, local officials and aristocratic visitors were brought in to see and do honor to Mary as a matter of course.13 Keeping court at Ludlow brought about a minor transformation in the way the nine-year-old princess saw herself. As never before, her life became geared to her office. She was often called away from her studies with Featherstone or from an afternoon of riding to sit in state and receive reverential attention from local landowners who had never before entered the presence of majesty. She now grew accustomed to being a public figure—to being gracious to strangers, to representing her father with dignity and to acting the part of the queen she might some day become. Mary came to Wales a sheltered girl of nine; she left it a seasoned royal personality of eleven. Though she had learned nothing of the art of governing she had learned to recognize the difference between her private and public lives, her familiar self and that self she presented when on view in the presence chamber. She saw herself as special, set apart from all others by the particular calling of her lineage. She would never againbe only an admired child; from now on she would expect to be treated as the revered heir to the throne of England.

  The surviving records of Mary’s life at Ludlow offer only fleeting glimpses of this transformation. We see her sending thanks to Wolsey for his discharging of her affairs—unspecified—while she is in Wales, through the president of her Council, the bishop of Exeter.14 With the Lady Governess, she spoke with the Council at least once a month, and gave account of the progress of her education. She was certainly caught up in the toils of courtier rivalries. Wales had its share of castles to hold, forests to govern, and parks to be administered. The offices of castellan, forester and parker were in the king’s gift, and whoever had influence with the king when the offices fell vacant stood to enrich himself if he could acquire them. Mary was constantly being asked to use her influence on some courtier’s behalf, and came face to face with the intricacies and dissimulations of the ambitious men surrounding her.

  In at least one area Mary was able to issue writs on her own. She had, by Henry’s command, “authority to kill or give deer at her pleasure in any forest or park” within the territory under the jurisdiction of her Council. In at least one instance, though, this authority was questioned. Mary issued a warrant to her secretary, John Russell, to kill a buck in Shotwick Park. The parker for Shotwick was Henry’s gentleman William Brereton, a groom of the privy chamber, whose kinsman Randolph Brereton looked after his affairs from Chester. It was Randolph who received the warrant, and hesitated before allowing Russell his buck, asking William whether or not he should honor the princess’ authorization. Personally he thought Russell ought to have it, because of his status as secretary, and added that if Mary’s warrants were not served, “displeasure will ensue.” Apparently Russell enjoyed his day of sport in Shotwick Park.15

  As the months went by the Council for the Marches fell into difficulty in carrying out its legal mandate. The original procedure to be followed—with cases coming before the Council only on appeal, after being tried by local “stewards and officers”—was being undercut by contrary orders from the royal justices in England. Lord Ferrers wrote to the bishop of Exeter that subpoenas were being issued directly to Caer-marthen and Cardigan for suitors to appear at Westminster, as part of an unprecedented effort to extend the power of the royal courts into the farthest of the Welsh territories. The legal powers of the Council were being ignored.

  Worse than that, the Welsh shires were responding to this threat of tighter control from Westminster by refusing to pay their taxes. “The shires say plainly,” Ferrers wrote, “that they will not pay one groat at this present Candlemas next coming, nor never after, . . . but they had rather run into the woods.” Clearly English rule in Wales was at a crisispoint. Ferrers declared the situation to be “the most serious thing that has occurred since I first knew Wales,” and the danger of large-scale rebellion eventually cut short the mandate of the Council and put an end to Mary’s first taste of public authority.16 Crime continued to flourish, even in the Council’s back yard. Only a few miles from Ludlow in the town of Bewdley a murderer had taken sanctuary and the townspeople refused to hand him over for trial. The man was a notorious felon who had killed his wife’s father and mother, but rather than acknowledge the jurisdiction of the justice for North Wales the people of Bewdley claimed that their town was able to grant sanctuary to all offenders, and a dispute arose over the authentication of this privilege.17

  All these considerations led to the breaking up of the Ludlow court early in 1527. The traveling carts were borrowed again, loaded, and sent southeastward toward London. Probably Mary did not greatly regret leaving behind the beautiful but inhospitable hills, the anxious courtiers and fuming councilors, the complaining gentlewomen homesick for the gaiety of Henry’s court. Besides, she had the best possible reason for leaving Wales: negotiations for a new betrothal had just been concluded.

  Henry’s cordiality toward Charles V had cooled, and Mary’s hand was now to be part of a complicated alliance with France which when finalized would see her promised either to Francis I, who was now a widower, or to one of his sons. The alliance would be celebrated with weeks of revelry at Greenwich, and Mary was now old enough to participate in the masques and other entertainments. There would be new gowns and slippers and new jewels, masquing costumes to be fitted and dances to learn. Mary had learned to be a figure of royalty in a castle on a hill; now she would try her hand at becoming a court lady.

  VII

  Ravished I was, that well was me,

  O Lord! to me so fain,

  To see that sight that 1 did see

  I long full sore again.

  I saw a king and a princess

  Dancing before my face,

  Most like a god and a goddess,

  I pray Christ save their grace!

  When Mary returned to her father’s court early in 1527 she found it dominated as never before by the masterful, ebullient king. Henry was now thirty-six, but he seemed ten years younger. After seeing him a foreign visitor wrote home that “never in his days did he see any man handsomer, more elegant, and better proportioned than this king, who is pink and white, fair, tall, agile, well formed and graceful in all his movements and gestures.” He had ruled England for nearly twenty years, yet he preserved a boyish freshness of manner and appearance that made him seem eternally youthful. Barring accidents, his would be an unusually long reign, and the two chief advantages of a long reign—stability and momentum—were already beginning to be apparent in England.

  More and more the diffused powers of government were gathering around the person of the king and his omnipotent chief minister Wolsey, and Henry’s personal magnificence kept pace with the growth of royal authority. Supplicants, diplomats and other dignitaries vied with one another in finding phrases to describe his grandeur, calling him “most famous lantern of grace” and comparing him to the sun and stars.1 One royal servant, Clement Urmeston, employed to design the torchlit chandeliers and “dancing lights” for Henry’s banquets, became convinced thatthe king possessed occult powers by virtue of his exalted office and believed that these powers were concentrated in his seal. The visual impact of the seal, properly directed, could influence the course of public affairs, Urmeston believed, but no one at court took his speculations seriously.2 Soon after Mary’s return Henry himself acknowledged his increased celebrity by assuming the style of “majesty” instead of the traditional referent “your grace.”3

  Every European court knew of his uncommon abilities; cordial wishes and gifts arrived from many of these courts in a steady stream. The marquis of Mantua sent splendid horses for Henry’s stables; Francis I sent a shipload of wild swine to be bred for his table. The chancellor of Poland, Christopher Schidlowijecz, sent him a rare great gerfalcon and fou
r falcon chicks from Danzig, and from another ruler came a tame leopard.4 Christian II, king of Denmark, sent his councilor George Menckevitz, an adventurer and man of arms who hoped to enter Henry’s service when he went to war again.5

  In fact Henry could no longer afford to go to war, and his last efforts to raise money by asking his nobles and clergy for an exorbitant “Amicable Grant” had led to rioting and resentment. He continued to stage the elaborate mock wars performed on his tilting ground, however, and he was still the chief performer, fighting both on foot and on horseback. He continued to order armor made according to designs of his own, and one afternoon he and his company tilted in new armor, “of a strange fashion that has not been seen,” against the men of the marquis of Exeter until nearly three hundred spears had been broken.6

  No matter what he did, Henry was the star attraction of the court. Whether he was exercising or riding or just walking in his gardens, invariably the palace would be deserted and a crowd of courtiers and sightseers would collect to dog his feet and applaud his every move.7 During the day he shone at sports and outdoor pastimes; at night it was dancing. Henry was not only a graceful but a virtually indefatigable dancer, and he loved to lead his courtiers in the intricate steps of the galliard late into the night. Mary was now old enough to join in the dancing, and now and then, to the delight of the entire court, Henry would take Mary as his partner. Her steps were as nimble, if not as long, as her father’s, and with their similarity of coloring and pleasing features they made a handsome pair. Vives’ treatises had warned Mary against the madness of dancing, which both the sober ancients and the church Fathers had condemned. “What meaneth that shaking unto midnight, and never weary?” he asked disapprovingly.8 But the princess evidently thought little of the warning, and Katherine, now very much a background figure at most entertainments, forgot to worry about her own worsening hold on the king’s affections and was happy when she saw Henry and Mary together.

  There would be dancing enough when the French ambassadors arrived for the final stage of the marriage negotiations. Mary’s betrothal to Charles V had been broken off shortly before she left for Wales, and for nearly two years Wolsey had been attempting to arrange a French match once again. Francis I needed a wife, but had promised to marry Charles V’s favorite sister Eleanor, the thirty-year-old widow of the king of Portugal. Francis had expressed a preference for Mary, acknowledging her beauty and virtue and admitting to Wolsey’s representative that “he had as great a mind to her as ever he had to any woman.”9 Compared to Eleanor, Mary “weighed down the balance by a great number of ounces,” but she was still a child; though he was pleased with the portrait of the princess Henry sent him (together with a portrait of Henry himself), Francis was in no hurry to commit himself irrevocably to either Mary or Eleanor.10 He wrote Mary a gracious letter, calling her “high and powerful princess” and assuring her of his loyalty as her “good brother, cousin and ally,” but in truth he was far from being an enthusiastic suitor.11 He had been thoroughly humiliated by the emperor, and for the time being his fate was not his own. He was, he said, willing to marry anything, even Charles V’s mule, if it meant regaining his dignity.

  Francis’ dismay was the result of another shuffling of interests and alliances among the European powers that occurred while Mary was in Wales. The realignment was triggered by events in Italy, where an invading French army was routed at Pavia in 1525 by the forces of Charles V and Francis himself was taken prisoner. Charles lost no time in exploiting Francis’ awkward position. The French king was imprisoned in Madrid and forced to buy his freedom; he agreed to give Charles the duchy of Burgundy and sovereignty over the French territories of Flanders and Artois. Charles’ other demand was harsh indeed. Francis’ two sons, the dauphin and the duke of Orleans, became the emperor’s hostages, guaranteeing their father’s good faith.

  Once he was back in France, Francis immediately renounced his oath to Charles, claiming that because it was taken under duress it was not binding. But though the pope santioned the breach of faith he could not force Charles to return the two hostages, and Francis was badly in need of help from any quarter. He turned to England, where the betrothal of Mary and Charles had just been officially ended. The imperial emissaries had been instructed to tell Henry that “he could have with much thank the lady princess [back] in his hand, which is a pearl worth the keeping.”12 Immediately Henry and Wolsey approached the French king, and though it seemed more and more certain that Francis himself would be forced to marry Eleanora in order to placate the emperor and free his sons, he was open to the betrothal of the duke of Orleans and the princess.

  It was in this diplomatic atmosphere of coercion and fear that four French envoys arrived at Dover six days after Mary’s eleventh birthday. They were the bishop of Tarbes, president of the parlement of Toulouse, the vicomte of Turenne, and La Viste, president of the parlement of Paris. Two months of hard bargaining followed. The English had the advantage: Francis reportedly feared more for his sons’ safety than for his own, and badly needed English men and money to make war on Charles. He faced a tortuous dilemma. If he married Eleanor, he would be bound to the emperor by ties of kinship; their children would have a claim to both France and Hapsburg lands. As yet, Charles had no successor, and his pregnant wife was sickly. If on the other hand Francis did not marry Eleanor, he had reason to fear for the lives of his hostage sons. As Wol-sey continually reminded the French negotiators, “there is no malice like the malice of a woman,” and the jilted widow might take a cruel revenge. Francis sent his envoys several sets of instructions. In one set he told them to oppose all the anticipated English demands and objections and to insist that Mary be delivered to him in France as quickly as possible. In secret dispatches, however, he authorized them to agree to anything that would hasten the progress of the talks and lead to a quick agreement.

  Wolsey and Henry worked as a smooth team. Wolsey, who held talks with the ambassadors nearly every day, alternated between openness and warmth and icy displeasure. He claimed to favor France, and made it clear that he had worked to restrain Henry from invading the country when Francis had been a helpless captive. Yet at the slightest opposition from the French negotiators he became hostile and adamant. At this point they would apply for an audience with Henry, who would proceed to disconcert them by his affability. Taking Turenne by the shoulders, the king would dismiss the difficulties with a wave of his hand and expand on his affection for Francis. If only they were ordinary gentlemen and not kings, he mused, he would be constantly in Francis’ company. On other occasions Henry would turn cold, sending the French scurrying back to Wolsey’s palace at Hampton Court in hopes of finding a compromise with the cardinal.

  A primary issue was the English insistence on an annual pension of 50,000 French crowns. At first the French refused this outright, but later made a counteroffer of 15,000 crowns. Wolsey took no more account of this counteroffer “than if they had given him a pair of gloves,” and Henry dismissed it with the remark that he had lost more than that in a single night of cards. When a stalemate arose Wolsey for the first time suggested that instead of taking Mary for himself Francis might marry her to his second son, adding that as a further inducement the duke of Richmond could be betrothed to Francis’ daughter. As it became apparent that Mary would not be allowed to go to France for several years,this alternative seemed more and more desirable, and eventually, when the interlocking treaties of perpetual peace, the military alliance and the marriage contract had all been drafted and redrafted several times, Henry signed them on May 5.

  There had never been any real doubt in the king’s mind that the negotiators would eventually agree. Six weeks before the French arrived he had ordered work begun on a banqueting hall and disguising theater on one side of the tiltyard at Greenwich. These would be the scene of a magnificent feast and entertainments to celebrate the signing of the treaties. Two teams of artisans and laborers were employed to complete the structures before the diplomats completed th
eir negotiations. The basic carpentry went quickly, but the ornamentation of the interiors was another matter. Four Italian painters and gilders, with their assistants, were brought in to work around the clock decorating the moldings of the high windows in the banqueting hall with carved crests and “savage work.” The antique candlesticks, “polished like amber,” that fitted into the moldings had to be painted and gilded, as did the five hundred “little antique leaves” that adorned the beams which held the chandeliers.

  A huge triumphal arch connected the banqueting hall and the disguising house, ornamented with gargoyles, serpents, and armorial designs. Henry’s motto “Dieu et Mon Droit” was carved into the arch, along with other mottoes and “antiques and devices.” Six busts of Roman emperors were ranged along its sides, and in all the gilt, coloring materials, and wages to the color grinders and painters who worked on this monument came to well over three hundred pounds. On the back of the arch was a painting of the siege of Thérouanne—a reminder of Henry’s victory over the French fourteen years earlier—executed by Hans Holbein. Holbein also worked on the revels house, a theater with tiers of seats around the sides for spectators. Carpets of silk embroidered with gold lilies covered the floor of the theater, and the ceiling, designed by Henry’s astronomer Nicholas Kratzer, showed a map of the earth, the planets and the signs of the zodiac. Pillars painted azure blue with gold stars and fleurs-de-lis divided the rows of seats, and each pillar held a great silver basin of branching wax candles that lit up the room. The disguising house had a high ornamented arch like that in the banqueting hall, and two more paintings by Holbein were hung along its walls. Even when the talks between Wolsey and the French temporarily broke down, work on the magnificent hall and theater progressed, so that by the time Wolsey’s clerks were copying out the treaties for the final time the foreign artisans were putting the finishing touches on their gilded handiwork.