Mary Tudor

by David Loades

  Henry, meanwhile, was hesitating over what to do about his daughter. In the light of Cranmer’s decision regarding the validity of her mother’s marriage, Mary was now illegitimate. However, the king seems to have hoped that by proceeding gently and showing her favour, he would persuade her to accept the new situation without a fuss. The only warning was that Lord Hussey was instructed to inventory her jewels, an exercise that was frustrated by the intransigence of the Countess of Salisbury. It is unlikely that Mary herself even knew about it.

  On 7 September Anne Boleyn was delivered of a daughter, who was named Elizabeth, and this event focused everyone’s mind. The royal couple were bitterly disappointed, and the hostile courts of Europe could hardly contain their mirth.

  Henry had moved heaven and earth to beget a legitimate son – and this was the result. Clearly God had a sense of humour. More importantly, it now became critical to distinguish between the legitimate and illegitimate daughters. By the laws of the Catholic Church Mary was legitimate and Elizabeth a bastard, but by the laws of England the reverse was the case. There must be no mistake over which was to prevail. Within a week Mary was informed that she was no longer princess but rather ‘the Lady Mary, the King’s daughter’ (and therefore outranked by her illegitimate half-brother, the Duke of Richmond), that her household would be reduced, and that her servants were henceforth to wear the king’s livery rather than hers. She refused to receive these tidings in any form other than a letter from the king, but Henry seems to have believed that she had submitted. On 1 October he authorised a new household for her, to number 162 persons and still headed by Lord Hussey and the Countess of Salisbury.[42]

  Chapuys made his habitual protest, but the reduction was probably no more than 25 per cent, and would have reduced the cost from almost £3,000 per annum to about £2,500. It soon became apparent, however, that such generosity was contingent upon her unequivocal acceptance of her new status. On 30 September she was visited by a commission headed by the Earl of Oxford, which required her, on pain of the king’s displeasure and punishment by law, to stop using the title of princess. This she adamantly refused to do, and followed up her refusal on 2 October with a letter of self-righteous reproach to her father, worthy of her mother at her most outspoken. She could not believe that he would act with such manifest injustice – and so on.[43]

  The king now had two recalcitrant female consciences to deal with, and he was not pleased. Moreover, in view of the plotting that was going on, both within England and abroad, his daughter’s defiance might well turn into serious danger. Henry pretended to believe that her mother and her servants were really responsible for this defiance, but the punishment could only be inflicted upon Mary herself. In early November, about a month after her refusal, Mary’s entire establishment was dissolved, and she herself, with some half dozen personal servants, was placed within the household then being created for Princess Elizabeth. Chapuys was speechless with indignation, blaming everything on the malice of Anne, ‘the concubine’. If he was right, it was an act of justifiable selfdefence in view of the symbolic position that Mary now occupied. From Buckden Catherine wrote to her daughter with a kind of gloomy exaltation: ‘Almighty God will prove you, and I am very glad of it, for I trust he doth handle you with a good love.’ They were now companions in martyrdom as well as misfortune.[44] Theoretically the new household was for both the king’s daughters, but of course Elizabeth as the legitimate princess took precedence in everything, and ‘the Lady Mary’ was under house arrest, in much less comfortable circumstances than her mother. It was not until 16 December that the decisions about the provision for Mary and Elizabeth were put into effect, so the former had had over a month to get used to the idea of her impending suffering. This makes her own protests on the day, and those of the Countess of Salisbury, appear distinctly theatrical, especially as a sympathetic crowd seems to have been assembled to witness the distressing scene. In spite of Cromwell’s diligence, Henry was not doing well in the battle for hearts and minds.[45]

  CHAPUYS’ LETTER TO CHARLES V 16 December 1533

  According to the determination come to by the king about the treatment of the Princess and the bastard,* of which I wrote in my last, the said bastard was taken three days ago to a house seventeen miles from here; and although there was a shorter and a better road, yet for greater solemnity and to insinuate to the people that she is the true Princess, she was taken through this town with the company which I wrote in my last; and next day the Duke of Norfolk went to the Princess to tell her that her father desired her to go to the court and service of the said bastard, whom he named Princess. The Princess answered that the title belonged to herself and to no other; making many very wise remonstrances that what had been proposed to her was strange and dishonourable. To which the Duke could not reply. After much talk he said that he had not come there to dispute, but to accomplish the king’s will; and the Princess, seeing that it was needless excusing herself, demanded half an hour’s respite to go to her chamber, where she remained about that time, to make, as I know, a protestation which I had sent her, in order that, if compelled by force or fraud to renounce her rights, or enter a nunnery, it might not be to her prejudice. On returning from her chamber she said to the Duke that since the king her father was so pleased, she would not disobey him, begging him to intercede with the king for the recompense of her servants, that they might have at least a year’s wages. She then asked what company she should bring. The Duke said it was not necessary to bring much, for she would find plenty where she was going; and so she parted with a very small suite. Her gouvernante, daughter of the late Duke of Clarence and near kinswoman to the king,† a lady of virtue and honour, if there be one in England, has offered to follow and serve her at her own expense, with an honourable train. But it was out of the question that this would be accepted; for in that case they would have no power over the Princess, whom it is to be feared they mean to kill, either with grief or otherwise, to make her renounce her right, or marry basely, or make her stain her honour, to have grounds for disinheriting her, since notwithstanding the remonstrances I have hitherto made touching the Princess, to which I have had no reply, the king has proceeded to such excesses; and considering that my words served only to irritate him, and make him more fierce and obstinate, I have resolved not again to address to him a single word, except he oblige me, without a command from the Queen. In order that the mother may have no occasion to envy her daughter being visited on the part of the king, certain persons, as I wrote to you, have gone to resolicit the Queen to ratify the sentence of Canterbury, and revoke the interdict which the Pope has so injuriously fulminated against the king and his kingdom. And to do this they threaten her punishment, and by degrees will cut off her train and her household.

  You cannot imagine the grief of all the people at this abominable government. They are so transported with indignation at what passes, that they complain that your majesty takes no steps in it; and I am told by many respectable people that they would be glad to see a fleet come hither in your name to raise the people; and if they had any chief among themselves who dared raise his head, they would require no more …

  [Letters and Papers … of the Reign of Henry VIII, VI, 1528.

  The original, in French, is in the Vienna Staatsarchiv]

  * Elizabeth.

  † Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury.

  3

  TRAUMA

  Over the next two years, Mary became an affliction to herself, and to everyone who had to deal with her. In February 1534, claiming that she was ‘nearly destitute of clothes’, she sent a gentleman of the household directly to the king, but since he was instructed not to receive anything unless she was addressed as princess, this was clearly a demonstration rather than a real request. At the end of March in the same year, when the household made a routine move to another residence, Mary refused to budge until she was properly addressed, so that the exasperated Lady Anne Shelton, who was in charge of the female side of
the establishment, had her bodily dumped in a litter and carted off – shrilly protesting. This must have had its funny side, but no one at the time was amused.[46] In September 1535, when the Bishop of Tarbes paid a formal visit to Elizabeth on behalf of the King of France, Mary had to be physically restrained from confronting him on the grounds that she was the only princess present, and his business should have been with her. Another furious row with Lady Shelton resulted. When Queen Anne came to visit her daughter, which she did quite frequently, Mary (unless she was kept out of the way) put herself about to behave as insultingly as possible, so that if Anne ever had it in mind to seek a reconciliation with this abrasive young woman – and there are some signs that she did – she was effectively deterred.[47] Chapuys, while ostensibly praising such virtuous behaviour, became in fact more than a little anxious. After the Act of Succession in 1534, designating Anne’s offspring as the royal heirs, Mary was technically guilty of high treason, and so were any of the servants who subscribed to her point of view, publicly or privately. Henry might still be fond of his difficult child, but his patience was notoriously erratic and Thomas Cromwell, himself under threat, could not afford to be squeamish.

  Apart from the occasions when she deliberately provoked her minders, Mary was not treated brutally, or even unsympathetically. Her health was fragile, due no doubt to the impact of stress upon an already unstable menstrual cycle, and frequent visits by the royal physicians are recorded, together with significant expenditure on medication. In March 1535, when she was recovering from ‘her usual ailment’, it was reported that:

  … the Lady Mary, the King’s daughter, after she was restored to health of her late infirmity, being in her own house, was much desirous to have her meat immediately after she was ready in the morning, or else she should be in danger eftsoons to return to her said infirmity ...[48]

  On medical advice, she was taking her main meal between nine and ten o’clock in the morning, which was not in keeping with the practice of the rest of the household. Nevertheless her preference was indulged, at an additional cost of £26 to the ‘diets’.

  Except for those comparatively brief periods when some outburst had left her confined to quarters by her irate father, Mary seems to have taken regular exercise, riding or walking in the extensive parks that surrounded most of the royal residences. She was never, of course, unaccompanied, but this was less for restraint than to ensure that she was not removed by sympathisers who might have taken her overseas, where she would have been an even greater threat. Like her mother, she was extremely nervous of poison, but in that respect they both of them did the king a major injustice. Had Henry been willing to employ such methods, he could have saved himself a lot of trouble, but he was not. More serious perhaps (and this was something which worried Catherine a lot) was the risk of ‘contamination’. It would have been relatively easy for Cromwell to have involved her in a scandal with some male member of the household, and immensely damaging to her reputation. Her own scrupulousness would not necessarily have protected her, and it can be reasonably assumed that it was the king, rather than the harassed Lady Shelton, who protected her from any such attempt.

  Much of what we know about Mary during the two and a half years that she spent in this joint household is derived either from the accounts or from Chapuys’ despatches. Consequently we know about her ‘rheums’, her ‘usual ailment’ and sundry neuralgias and other afflictions for which medicines were provided. We also know that the Imperial ambassador provided her and her mother with everything from ‘books of consolation’ to political advice. He was constantly in touch with Mary, and made endless and tediously repetitive representations to the council on her behalf.[49]

  Chapuys was indulged because he represented a powerful master. Henry was again hankering after improving his relations with the Emperor, and only twice was goaded into telling the ambassador that his master should be encouraged to mind his own business. Most specifically, in September 1534 he instructed his own ambassador to tell Charles ‘… we think it not meet that any person should prescribe unto us how we should order our own daughter, we being her natural father’. Had the king really been aware of the extent and nature of Chapuys’ activities, he could not have failed to demand his recall. The ambassador was deeply involved with the English malcontents, and in September 1534 was actually discussing the possibilities of a rising in England, particularly with Lord Darcy and Lord Hussey – Mary’s former chamberlain.[50] He did his level best to persuade Charles that this was a realistic prospect, and that ‘all good people’ in England would support it. The Emperor was unconvinced, but he did discuss with his council the possibility of supporting the Kildare revolt in Ireland, ‘considering the offers made by divers princes there to remain under the Emperor’s authority, and hold the country of the Queen and Princess’. Quite what this would have meant in practice is not clear, but for a couple of months at least intervention seems to have been a real possibility. However, it did not happen, partly because the rebels were not doing well enough for a mere token gesture to suffice. If the Irish were really going to overthrow Henry’s rule, then a serious commitment of troops would be called for, and that was quite sufficient to deter Charles from taking any action. Nor did anything happen in England, which is no doubt why Chapuys’ machinations went undetected. Catherine, in any case, had made it clear that she would be no party to insurrection. However good her cause, it was not to be defended in that way.

  Mary was more biddable. She was keenly aware of the immense debt that she owed to the ambassador for his moral and practical support, and expressed herself in the warmest terms to Charles – her one-time fiancé. He was, she is alleged to have said, her real father, and she would never consider marrying without his advice and consent.[51] In October 1535 she went further, writing (by way of Chapuys) to Gattinara, the Emperor’s chief minister, that ‘the affairs of this kingdom will go to total ruin if his majesty does not, for the service of God … take brief order and apply a remedy’. This was treason, as even the ambassador must have known, and indicates that had there been any equivalent of the Kildare rebellion in England, Mary would have been deeply involved, and if it had failed she would have lost her head.

  The Emperor was in a cleft stick. Because of his permanently bad relations with France, and the threat from the Ottomans, to say nothing of the developing religious tensions in Germany, he needed English support, as he frankly admitted. On the other hand he could not contemplate doing anything prejudicial to the cause of ‘the Queen and Princess’. A bit of pressure in Ireland would have been acceptable, and if the English themselves (by whatever means) could have persuaded Henry to give up Anne and return to Catherine, he would have been delighted. But he had no desire to see Henry overthrown, nor England reduced to the kind of turmoil that would have rendered it useless as an ally in an emergency.

  In May 1534 the Rota, the supreme ecclesiastical court in Rome, finally adjudicated Catherine’s appeal in her favour. This made not the slightest difference to the situation in England, but Catherine became more selfrighteous than ever in correspondence with her nephew. She explained at great length the horrendous sins of the English in general and of Henry in particular; both she and her daughter, she complained, were suffering the pains of purgatory. ‘I am as Job,’ she wrote, ‘waiting for the day when I must go sue for alms for the love of God.’ As she was sitting at the centre of a household that was costing her iniquitous husband nearly £3,000 a year, this was pure fiction.[52]

  What both women did, partly out of genuine conviction and partly because it was politically convenient, was to blame Anne Boleyn for their troubles. Chapuys assiduously promoted the same view, partly because it gave a pretext for Charles to maintain diplomatic relations with Henry, and partly because he knew perfectly well that her political influence was pro-French. In truth Anne seems to have been largely indifferent to Catherine, whom she probably regarded as a spent force. Mary she both feared and disliked, but her influence over the k
ing in that direction was limited. She may well have persuaded Henry to curtail his daughter’s liberty when she had been particularly obnoxious, but such restraints were always short lived, and the king’s anger with Mary was not because she had upset his queen so much as because her behaviour was making it impossible for him to treat her with the affection that he still felt.

  Given the trouble that they were causing him, Henry behaved towards both women with considerable restraint. When the Act of Succession became law on 30 March 1534, it became high treason to refuse to accept Elizabeth as the king’s lawful daughter and heir.[53] Henry knew perfectly well that both Catherine and Mary would refuse such an oath, so, in spite of some graphic threats, he would not allow it to be administered to them. Their servants were compelled to swear, and did so, much to Catherine’s disgust. She complained that that made them ‘rather gaolers than servants’, but it seems to have made no difference either to their diligence or to their loyalty to her. In her anger, Catherine was less than fair, and never showed any appreciation of the king’s forbearance towards her own person. There was also, of course, an element of self-interest in his attitude, because if he had proceeded to extremes against either of them, then even the deaths of Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher (who had both refused to accept Henry as supreme head of the Church) would have paled into insignificance beside the scandal that would have been created.