by Linda Porter
Mary knew, once the lessons of 1536 sunk in, that her security and peace of mind, such as she had, rested on unswerving obedience. The defiant young woman disappeared, to be replaced by one ever-willing to do her father’s bidding. Marriage proposals came and went with a regularity she viewed almost cynically, for she understood that Henry could not let her go. Ironically, her one serious chance of becoming a wife was when duke Philip of Bavaria came to court her in person in 1539. Though he was a Protestant whom she may well have accepted in order to establish a life of her own, terms could not be agreed and Henry was too preoccupied with the forthcoming Cleves marriage (and, later, how he could be extricated from it) to bother much about Mary. Once, in a rare moment of self-awareness, he told diplomats from France who were trying to negotiate a marriage between Mary and the duke of Orléans that he ‘loved his daughter well, but himself and his own honour more’. So she remained outside his orbit, often with Edward and Elizabeth, an occasional visitor to the court in London, but well informed of what was going on there. She became a political survivor out of necessity. Being unremarked was preferable to celebrity and, besides, she enjoyed leading a quiet life, indulging her passion for gambling with her ladies and returning to the educational studies interrupted in 1533. If there were any doubts lingering about her father’s intentions for those who had supported her cause, his execution of leading courtiers of the so-called ‘Aragonese’ party in the late 1530s and the appallingly brutal beheading of the elderly countess of Salisbury in 1541 served as reminders of what those who had upheld her rights might still suffer if she did not exercise supreme care.
Nor was it just those once close to her. Cromwell, whom she had regarded as a mentor, was cast aside and put to death in 1540, while Henry’s fifth wife, Katherine Howard, went to the block for adultery at the beginning of 1542. Mary did not get on with Henry’s very young bride at first, but their relationship had improved, if they were never close. The teenage queen’s tragedy, however, must have brought home to Mary how near she had come to sharing a similar fate six years earlier, though for very different reasons. And yet Katherine’s demise also, though not immediately, signalled a change in her own fortunes.
As the summer gave way to autumn, the king’s spirits revived and he decided that he wanted Mary back at court permanently. Her retinue would lift the atmosphere as well as his own spirits. She was a young woman who liked finery and fashion and the court would be less subdued and more glamorous when her household was established there. Considerable work was undertaken on her apartments at Hampton Court in time for Christmas 1542 and Mary duly arrived to spend much more time in her father’s company. Her presence attracted the court ladies and certainly made the festive season much more lively than it had been the previous year, when Henry was sunk in gloom. In London itself, Mary’s comfort was also suddenly a priority and expense no problem. So construction began on a new residence at Whitehall, completed in 1543. It was a separate courtyard house built right on the river wall. The first floor was almost entirely glass on the east side, affording magnificent views of the Thames and was far more splendid than anything Mary had known during the years since her fall from favour.8 Yet this gesture was more than a token of her father’s desire for her company. Henry was ageing and in poor health. He knew he must think again about the succession and the situation of his daughters. Bringing Mary back into the public eye was part of a strategy he had begun to consider before his marriage to Katherine Parr. His new queen, however, became a staunch champion of the princess, and her regard for Mary, which was clearly demonstrated, certainly improved Mary’s prospects, as well as enriching her life.
Soon after the wedding, Katherine gave Mary a present of a pair of beautiful gold bracelets, set with rubies, emeralds and diamonds. The gift showed her generosity (and her new-found access to the sort of riches that would have been well beyond the reach of Lady Latimer), as did the presents of purses containing money, which were often exchanged as tokens of female friendship among the aristocracy. The choice of jewellery, though, exhibited a keen appreciation of her stepdaughter’s character. This does not mean that Katherine was trying to buy Mary’s affection; it is clear from her actions that the princess approved, from the outset, of her father’s latest wife. Rather, it shows an instinctive understanding of shared enjoyment in lovely things. Clothes and jewels mattered very much to both women, as did entertainment, the cultural life of the court and the joys of the outdoors. Music was another passion that brought them together, as Katherine noted when she sent one of her favourite musicians as a messenger to Mary, praising his ‘skill in music, in which you, I am well aware, take as much delight as myself’. The life at court suited the queen and the princess. Their relationship thrived on conversation and diversion and being part of other people’s lives (Mary was a godmother to numerous children) as well as the more serious pursuits of high-born ladies, study and religion.
The perceptions that have come down to us of Katherine Parr and Mary Tudor are those of a Protestant bluestocking and a Catholic bigot respectively. This depiction would make it seem impossible that they had much in common, let alone a predilection for the trappings of wealth and privilege. But this characterization is an invention of a much later age. Neither woman was so firmly set in her ways that their relationship suffered. Mary had accepted her father’s religious changes, perhaps with some reservations but these do not seem to have bothered her unduly, and her humanist education meant that she was not clinging to a stultified concept of the religion in which she had been brought up. The Mass was important to her, as it was to her father, and while he lived, Katherine was herself in regular attendance at this central ceremony of religious observance in Henrician England. It is true that, while she was queen, Katherine’s faith developed along different lines from Mary’s, and that Mary banned Katherine’s best-known publication, The Lamentation of a Sinner, when she ascended the throne, but much had changed in Mary’s life during the intervening years. In the mid-1540s, Mary was happy to encourage her stepmother’s study of Latin and to participate in Katherine’s major literary project as queen, the translation of Erasmus’s Paraphrases of the New Testament, undertaking the translation of St John’ Gospel herself. Illness made it impossible for Mary to finish her contribution; Francis Mallet, who was Katherine’s chaplain but moved to Mary’s household, completed the work.
There is no reason to suppose that Mary’s illness was convenient and that she had reservations about what she was doing. She later expressed concern for being credited with something that was not entirely her own work but Katherine reassured her:
Now since, as I have heard, the finishing touch (as far as the translation is concerned) is given by Mallet to Erasmus’s work upon St John, and nought now remains but that proper care and vigilance should be taken in revising, I entreat you to send over to me this very excellent and useful work … that it may be committed to the press in due time; and farther, to signify whether you wish it to go forth to the world (most auspiciously) under your name, or as the production of an unknown writer. To which work you will, in my opinion, do a real injury, if you refuse to let it go down to posterity under the auspices of your own name, since you have undertaken so much labour in accurately translating it for the great good of the public, and would have undertaken still greater (as is well known) if the health of your body had permitted. And since all the world knows that you have toiled and laboured much in this business, I do not see why you should repudiate that praise which all men justly confer on you. However, I leave this whole matter to your discretion and, whatever resolution you may adopt, that will meet my fullest approbation … Most devotedly and lovingly yours, Katherine the Queen.9
Mary did not refuse this appeal. How could she? The letter, with its combination of praise and gentle encouragement, is very much a companion to the one that Katherine had earlier written to Prince Edward. It is composed in a different style, as one adult to another, but shows a similar mastery of persuasion. The
re can be no doubt, though, that Katherine was genuinely impressed by what Mary had produced. And so Mary, the first Tudor queen, became a published author, like her stepmother, though she is scarcely remembered for having translated Erasmus’s paraphrase of what is sometimes described as the most beautiful of the Gospels into the English language.
But in 1543 all this lay in the future. Katherine’s immediate priority in her relationship with Mary was to ensure that Henry remained steadfast in his intentions towards the young woman. She appreciated that Mary’s position was of international, not merely domestic, importance. Fences were being mended with Charles V as Henry contemplated the likelihood of war with both France and Scotland, and the revival of Mary’s prospects would be well received at the imperial court in Brussels. The new queen’s kindness towards the princess was noted by the imperial ambassador within weeks of her marriage. He told the emperor: ‘The king continues his good treatment of the princess, whom he has retained with the queen, who shows her all affection.’ Chapuys went on to add, rather smugly, that Elizabeth, whom he referred to as ‘the daughter of Anne Boleyn’, had been sent off to join her brother.10 The ambassador got to know Katherine well over the next two years and he was charmed by her grace and her consideration towards him, as well as her evident love for Mary, the princess he had supported through perilous times. Charles V was also pleased that the king of England had at last married a sensible woman who seemed well intentioned towards his cousin and the Habsburg cause in general. Katherine was definitely to be cultivated, he told his ambassador.
Mary might have spent longer with her father and stepmother during the autumn progress, but she fell ill towards the end of September and was not permanently reunited with them until they returned to Hampton Court for Christmas. This separation did her no harm, however. Her father’s sixth marriage had given him new purpose and, as he prepared to go to war with France, he also forged ahead with his intention of clarifying the succession. The act that was passed in parliament in February 1544 was a landmark in English history, the first time that the right of females to succeed to the throne was spelt out in statute law. It also made clear that Henry still hoped to have children with ‘the most virtuous and gracious lady Katherine, now queen of England, late wife of John Neville, knight, Lord Latimer deceased, by whom as yet his majesty hath none issue, but may have full well when it shall please God’. The occasion of the act, its text went on to say, was that the king
most prudently and wisely considering and calling to his remembrance how this realm standeth at this present time in the case of the succession … recognizing and acknowledging also that it is in the only pleasure and will of Almighty God how long his highness or his entirely beloved son, Prince Edward, shall live … his majesty therefore thinketh convenient afore his departure beyond the seas, that it be enacted … that in case it shall happen the king’s majesty and the said excellent prince his yet only son Prince Edward and heir apparent, to decease without heir of either of their bodies lawfully begotten … then the said imperial crown and other the premises shall be to the Lady Mary, the king’s highness’ daughter, and to the heirs of the body of the same Lady Mary … and for default of such issue the said imperial crown and other the premises shall be to the Lady Elizabeth, the king’s second daughter …11
England had no Salic Law barring women from the throne, as did France, but there had never before been an explicit piece of legislation giving them the right to succeed. The act was also remarkable for omitting the mention of all save Henry’s direct heirs. Neither of his sisters’ children were included, though Margaret Douglas, daughter of the Queen of Scots, Henry’s elder sister, was at court in attendance on Katherine Parr, and his younger sister’s two daughters both had girls of their own. In time, this would give rise to serious problems, but, for now, the king considered that he had done his duty for his country and for his family. Mary had not legally regained her title of princess and she was still regarded as illegitimate. But she and her younger sister could take comfort in the knowledge that, after their brother, they were Henry’s official heirs. The Act of Succession signified an improvement in their fortunes which their stepmother, Katherine, welcomed wholeheartedly.
THE ‘KING’S second daughter’, as the Act of Succession called her, was nearly ten when Katherine became her father’s wife. Elizabeth was a highly intelligent child (Henry had reason to be proud of all his children in this respect, though he does not appear to have made much of it), watchful and suitably grave in her rare public utterances. Her reaction to her mother’s downfall, and its effect on her, is one of the great mysteries of the Tudor period. She had clearly been schooled never to speak of her mother in public and she carried this habit with her throughout her life. It must have taken a great effort of will. She is said to have remarked on the change in the way her servants addressed her when she, like Mary before her, was declared illegitimate and denied the title of princess, but her household staff were determined that she should not be forgotten. Lady Bryan famously wrote in high dudgeon to Thomas Cromwell about the state of Elizabeth’s wardrobe in August 1536: ‘I beg you to be good lord to her and hers, and that she may have raiment, for she has neither gown, nor kirtle nor petticoat, nor linen for smocks, nor kerchiefs …’12 The list went on, giving the impression of a little girl literally denuded by her mother’s disgrace. Anne Boleyn had spent £40 a month (£14,000 today) on herself and her daughter and now, having presumably grown out of everything in recent months, Elizabeth had nothing. Lady Bryan’s request was evidently met, for it was not repeated, and the problems were temporary. There was never any question of Henry repudiating Elizabeth, despite lurid tales from Europe that Anne had confessed at the last that Elizabeth was the product of her incestuous union with her own brother, George Boleyn. Henry knew that Elizabeth, who bore a strong resemblance to him (and to her siblings), was his.
By the time Lady Bryan was despatched to run Prince Edward’s nursery, Elizabeth and Mary were sharing a household. Mary became very fond of her younger sister, reporting her progress to the king and buying her toys and clothes. Elizabeth continued, like Mary, to be well served. Her own staff was headed by Lady Blanche Herbert and Katherine Ashley became her chief gentlewoman, probably as early as the end of 1536. Kat Ashley was the daughter of a Devon family with reformist religious leanings. She was probably still in her teens when she entered Elizabeth’s service and helped shape her early education. Elizabeth loved her dearly but her influence on the princess was at its greatest after the death of Henry VIII.
Elizabeth did not see much of her father, but then nor did Edward, the heir to the throne. Despite the shadow that hung over her mother, there is no reason to suppose that she was neglected or unhappy as a child, though precise details of her day-to-day existence at this time are scant. Anne Boleyn’s ambitious plans for Elizabeth’s education were largely followed, even though Elizabeth was no longer being trained to rule. Those who met her were struck by her powers of expression, her self-possession and her desire to do the right thing. Thomas Wriothesley, then Clerk of the Signet, reported to Henry VIII that the six-year-old Elizabeth talked to him with all the gravity of a woman of forty when he had visited her and Mary at Hertford Castle in 1539. Elizabeth herself was also keen to have her father’s approval – and that of Katherine Parr. For the one thing missing in her life, which she had perhaps not realized until Katherine came along, was a mother.
It appears to have been quite a revelation. Elizabeth’s earliest surviving letter, dated 31 July 1544, is to Katherine Parr. Written in Italian, in the fine italic hand that Elizabeth was to embellish so superbly in coming years, this missive tells us much about the girl who wrote it and also about Katherine, too:
Inimical Fortune, envious of all good, she who revolves things human, has deprived me for a whole year of your most illustrious presence, and still not being content with that, has robbed me once again of the same good; the which would be intolerable to me if I did not think to enjoy it
soon. And in this my exile I know surely that your highness’ clemency has had as much care and solicitude for my health as the king’s majesty would have had. For which I am not only bound to serve you but also to revere you with daughterly love, since I understand that your most illustrious highness has not forgotten me every time that you have written to the king’s majesty, which would have been for me to do. However, heretofore I have not dared to write to him, for which at present I must humbly entreat your most excellent highness that in writing to his majesty you will deign to recommend me to him, entreating ever his sweet benediction and likewise entreating Lord God to send him best success in gaining victory over his enemies so that your highness, and I together with you, may rejoice the sooner at his happy return. I entreat nothing else from God but that He may preserve your most illustrious highness, to whose grace, humbly kissing your hands, I offer and commend myself. From St James on the thirty-first of July, Your most obedient daughter and most faithful servant, Elizabeth.13
At first glance, this seems a curiously stilted effort. It is, nevertheless, very revealing, once the allowances for etiquette, formality of address and Elizabeth’s still imperfect grasp of the Italian language have been appreciated. And the choice of that language is surely significant. Elizabeth was, of course, eager to demonstrate her skills in a tongue that was neither Latin nor English, but her own proficiency at the age of eleven in both was clearly taken as given. She shared language tutors with Edward and was an outstanding pupil. She must also have known that her stepmother would understand what she wrote. Perhaps she had discussed her progress in modern languages with Katherine at earlier meetings, and she might also have seen the copy of Petrarch that we know the queen possessed.
