Mary Tudor: The First Queen

by Linda Porter

  This was a glorious prospect, but not necessarily an enviable one. Mary was born into a turbulent Europe, where even the great flowering of art, literature, music and thought that characterised the Renaissance could not disguise the harsh nature of political realities. The balance of power might change but warfare was not just endemic, it was a prized way of life for the aristocracy. Europeans faced an existence that, for most, was indeed brutal and short. Recurring bouts of pestilence swept over the continent, decimating populations often weakened by famine. In 1485, the year of the accession of Mary’s grandfather, Henry VII, England suffered its first outbreak of the sweating sickness, a type of virulent influenza that tended to be more prevalent in the warmer months. It struck swiftly and with frightening effect, killing seemingly healthy people in the space of 24 hours. By the time of Mary’s birth the sweat, as it was known, was well established as an annual hazard. Just as deadly as the spectre of disease were the vagaries of the weather. Drought and flood ruined harvests, bringing further misery, and even the rich and high born, with more mobility and better diets, could not be sure of survival. Henry VIII spent every summer evading sickness by moving around the south of England, keeping well clear of London. His success in this respect did not make him less of a hypochondriac.2

  In a Europe where life was so uncertain, the needs of the dead naturally occupied the minds of those who survived. The existence of God and the survival of the soul coloured the daily lives of everyone, from king to poorest peasant. Prayer was the means by which the living could intercede for departed loved ones, shortening their time in purgatory and eventually freeing them, it was hoped, from the torments of hell. These abstractions were absolute certainties for 16th-century people, for whom religion was as much a part of everyday existence as breathing and sleeping. But by the second decade of the century, there were many concerns about the role of the religious establishment that governed the earthly structure of religion. One minor aspect that would shortly acquire an unexpected significance was irritation at the idea that the soul could be speeded to its repose by the purchase of indulgences. This appealed to the gullible or just the plain lazy - prayer and Church ceremonial took up a lot of time - and it appealed to the Church’s accountants even more. Everywhere, the power of the Church was evident and resented. The early 16th-century popes ran an enormously wealthy - and equally worldly - business enterprise. The Vatican was a byword for double-dealing, promiscuity and greed. Even the most devout sadly recognised that Rome was full of bankers and whores. As war leaders, the popes stood shoulder to shoulder with the kings of Europe and were determined, wherever possible, to profit from the conflicts that they so happily embraced.

  But these failings and uncertainties were nothing new and they did not dent the enthusiasm of the rich and powerful in Europe for the good things of the Renaissance. When Mary was born the early artists were beginning to pass. Botticelli had died in 1510 and Leonardo, a refugee from his native Tuscany, died in France when Mary was three. Michelangelo, on the other hand, was at the height of his powers, having completed the Sistine Chapel in 1512. Desiderius Erasmus, the greatest of the humanist thinkers, was thriving in northern Europe, patronised by Mary’s father and his fellow-monarchs. In the year before Mary’s birth, Thomas More wrote his discourse on the ideal political state, Utopia, ensuring that the credentials of the English as contributors to the new ideas would be taken seriously. Universities throughout the continent thrived.Yet amid this ferment, fundamental questions about the nature of the relationship between the Church and the state, as well as the Church and the individual, had yet to find an effective outlet.Their first serious expression came from an unlikely source, when Mary was just one year old. An Augustinian monk in Germany, besieged by self-doubt and irritated by a friar from a rival order who was flagrantly selling indulgences on his doorstep, decided to raise an academic debate about the obnoxious practice of buying one’s way out of sin. His name was Martin Luther. He would change the world, and, with it, the course of Mary’s life.

  The country into which Mary was born was regarded with varying amounts of condescension by its mainland European neighbours. The barbarity, duplicity and sheer effrontery of the English were often remarked upon. ‘Pink, white and quarrelsome’ was the splendid description of one group of disgusted Spanish visitors. England was not generally liked or respected in Europe. Ferdinand and Isabella considered it suitable only for their youngest daughter; they were not entirely convinced by the new dynasty’s hold on power.When Mary was born, the Tudors had been ruling for only 30 years and Henry VIII’s perception that his inheritance was not stable was real and alarming. England throughout Mary’s lifetime was a dangerous, violent place, its political life characterised by faction and intrigue. Ambition could as easily bring death as power, and in this heated atmosphere men seldom kept their feelings in check. Tudor England was emotionally raw. It was not uncommon for blows to be exchanged in council meetings and Henry VIII himself apparently subjected his ministers to physical abuse. Cardinal Wolsey was known for his bad language; on one occasion he harassed a papal delegation who had come to see him and threatened them physically. Grown men wept readily, sometimes, no doubt, out of fear for their own survival. Ambassadors from France and Spain resident in London agreed on very little, but they both knew that you could not trust an English politician, no matter how much you paid him - and both countries often paid generously. The principled English politician seemed to be a contradiction in terms. Even worse were the general populace, a load of xenophobic drunks who would cut your throat sooner than offer you board and lodging.

  Mary’s Spanish inheritance, on the other hand, though no less violent in some ways, placed her at the centre of the struggle for power in Europe. In understanding Mary herself, this part of her background is often misconstrued. Generations of English historians have been mightily displeased with the fact that Mary was half Spanish, as if this ‘impurity’ of blood, in contrast to the wholly English credentials of her half-sister, Elizabeth, was some sort of birth defect.Yet, in 16th-century Europe, where dynastic marriages were a vital part of the struggle for power, such a descent would have been viewed as an asset, not a liability. The English kings were unusual in marrying their own country-women. This 15th-century habit was a result of a combination of civil war and personal inclinations which had kept them out of the European marriage market, and out of European influence, during the long period between 1445, when Henry VI married Margaret of Anjou, and 1501, when Prince Arthur married Katherine of Aragon. In later life, Mary would find her Spanish ancestry a source of both solace and pride, and she would look to the power of her mother’s family to give England a role in Europe that she believed would enhance, rather than detract from, its influence.

  Ferdinand and Isabella, Mary’s grandparents, were, it has been said, the first ‘power couple’ in early modern Europe.3 Theirs was certainly an effective, if sometimes fraught, alliance. Isabella was a warrior queen, equally ruthless in the pursuit of power and of religious certainty. She saw off the stronger claims of her niece to the throne of Castile with as much single-mindedness as she undertook campaigning in the south of Spain against the Moors. Her alliance with Ferdinand was politically expedient to both of them but does seem to have been characterised by passion, despite Ferdinand’s infidelity. Isabella was a woman of great mental strength and physical determination. The inconvenience of successive pregnancies and a growing family did not stop her spending long months with her armies, much of the time on horseback. She was a woman untroubled by doubt and her narrowly focused vision did not permit her to recognise the damage done to Spanish culture by the destruction of its rich Moorish and Jewish heritage. In an intolerant age, Isabella was a true heir of the Crusaders, and fiercely proud of her achievements. Her portraits show a reserved but determined, almost ascetic woman. It is not hard to imagine her in a nun’s habit, but Isabella’s service to the Lord was offered outside the cloister, on the battlefields of Spain. Her calmnes
s is evident in her face. She knew that God had given her victory.

  Nor does she ever seem to have questioned the ability of herself, a mere woman, to rule. Why should she? Political reality meant that her husband’s need of her was actually greater than her need of him.This does not mean, of course, that she would ever have considered ruling alone and unmarried. Marriage was the destiny ordained by the God she served for all women, even queens who ruled in their own right. Her example was not lost on her own family, even if it did not find much of an echo in other European countries. And the growth of that family allowed the achievements of Isabella and her husband to reach beyond Iberia, so that two generations later their descendants would be the masters not just of Europe, but of the new worlds opened up by explorers they had supported. When Isabella’s eldest daughter, the lovely but mentally unstable Juana, married Philip the Fair of Burgundy, two of Europe’s most powerful ruling houses were united.The Habsburg family ruled much of Europe from the Low Countries in the north to the tip of the Iberian peninsula, and laid claim to most of South America. Isabella’s grandson, Charles V, invested with the ancient title of Charlemagne, Holy Roman Emperor, was hated by Rome and feared by the encircled French. He was Mary’s first cousin and a powerful presence in her life.

  The daughter of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon, was, nevertheless, brought up as an entirely English princess.This emphasis began with her christening at the church of the Observant Friars in Greenwich,just two days after her birth. Following tradition, neither Henry nor Katherine was present at the ceremony, but the flower of the English nobility certainly was. Not since the marriage of Katherine and her first husband had so many of the great names of the aristocracy gathered together for a public event. It was not, however, a family occasion, like a modern christening, but an affair of state. Henry wanted to display his own continuing power in an impressive setting, and he also wanted to remind any of his great lords who might feel disgruntled that he was the heir of both York and Lancaster. Acting as one of Mary’s godmothers was her great-aunt, Princess Katherine of York, the only surviving child of Edward IV. At 37, she was a young great-aunt, though already a widow. She had married Sir William Courtenay and become countess of Devon, where she lived in considerable style near Tiverton. How dutiful a godmother she was we do not really know, though the 1517/18 accounts show that she gave her god-daughter a golden spoon.4 Mary was 11 when Katherine died in 1527. But Katherine’s grandson, Henry Courtenay, earl of Devon, was closely linked to Mary at several points of her life and was considered more than once as a possible husband.

  The Howard family, who had fought alongside Richard III at Bosworth Field but who were thereafter to serve the Tudors in a relationship that became increasingly strained under HenryVIII, also figured prominently at Mary’s christening.The duchess of Norfolk was another of Mary’s godmothers and her daughter-in-law, the countess of Surrey, carried the baby into the church. The christening was immediately followed, as was the custom, by confirmation, and this required a third godmother. The lady chosen was Margaret Pole, countess of Salisbury, the daughter of George, duke of Clarence - Shakespeare’s ‘fast, fleeting, perjured Clarence’, memorably drowned in a butt of malmsey according to the playwright - and, as Mary’s future lady governess, she would play perhaps the most important role of any woman in Mary’s early life.

  So Mary was christened surrounded by the mightiest of her father’s subjects, those whom she could expect to command directly as his heir. To reinforce the significance of her birth, her godfather was Henry’s chief minister, the immensely capable and gifted Cardinal Wolsey. The French king Francis, who had recently inherited the throne, was pointedly not asked. No one could have failed to miss the point that Henry so effectively made in choosing his daughter’s godparents.

  Four knights of the realm held the canopy over the well-wrapped baby as she entered the church. One of them, in an irony that became apparent only with the passage of time, was Sir Thomas Boleyn, a career diplomat of talent and ambition, who had sent his own daughter, Anne, to learn how to be a great lady in the courts of Burgundy and France.

  The way to the church had been cleaned, gravelled and covered with rushes and the ceremony was carried out with all the pomp and circumstance required. Sixteenth-century London was surprisingly capable of producing spectacle at very short notice and it did not let Mary down at her christening. Once the ceremony was complete, the little princess was returned to her mother in the Queen’s Chamber at Greenwich Palace, Katherine presumably having made a sufficient recovery from the birth 48 hours earlier to be up and about, at least for a while.We do not know when Henry first saw his daughter, though both parents were undoubtedly pleased with her. Henry was reported to have boasted that she never cried. In his presence, she probably never did. Mary was an attractive baby, and there was genuine parental affection. But she did not stay with them long.

  From these very early days, Mary would live close to, but separate from, her parents. As a baby she seems to have stayed very near to them, and to have passed Christmas with them at Greenwich, but babies and all their paraphernalia did not figure in the day-to-day lives of 16th-century monarchs. There is evidence that Henry and Katherine, in particular, took more interest than other monarchs might have done in Mary’s development, but the notion that Katherine raised her daughter herself is at odds with the role of a queen consort, and Katherine had been a very diligent practitioner of this role during her years of childlessness.

  So, in the first two years of her life, Mary was cared for by a wet-nurse, Katherine Pole (later Lady Brooke), wife of one of the king’s gentlemen ushers, a team of four rockers, no doubt intended to soothe her when she was lying in her magnificent cradle, and the highly necessary person of a laundress, to deal with all the washing that a small child generates. In the feeding, changing and daily routine of her daughter’s life, Katherine took no part.We can imagine that every effort was made by Mary’s first lady governess, Elizabeth Denton, to have the baby as presentable and quiet as possible when Queen Katherine came to see her. By 1518, Elizabeth Denton’s role had reverted to Lady Margaret Bryan, who subsequently fulfilled the same role for both of Henry’s much younger children when they were in the early stages of infancy.

  The princess’s household seems to have been a functioning unit within days of her birth. As well as the nursery staff and the lady governess there was a treasurer to manage finances, a chaplain and a gentlewoman. Mary’s expenses soon began to grow. In the six months between October 1517 and March 1518 they stood at £421.12s 1d. By 1519/20 they had risen to £1,100, about £400,000 today.5 Not until her father’s death in 1547 would Mary actually have any income of her own, but she grew up as the focus of a substantial business unit, whose members had considerable responsibilities as well as privileges.

  But it was also something more than a royal institution in its own right. Mary’s household was, in a very real sense, her family. Katherine of Aragon conceived once more after Mary’s birth, in 1518, but the child was another girl and we do not even know whether it was born dead or succumbed shortly after birth. From this point onwards, it was an accepted fact that Mary was her father’s only legitimate child, and, therefore, his heir. The chagrin Katherine must have felt when Henry’s mistress, Elizabeth Blount, gave birth to a son in 1519 did not cause her to fear for her daughter. Later, young Henry Fitzroy’s position in respect of his half-sister was less clear-cut, though never in Katherine’s mind.

  Mary grew up surrounded by a staff who may well have had some degree of self-interest in maintaining their employment but who seemed to have held her in genuine affection.This early ability to inspire loyalty and love in those who served her remained a constant throughout Mary’s life and she was always solicitous of her servants’ welfare. Although she was a little girl in an adult world, her life was not necessarily devoid of amusement. A later fixture in Mary’s life was her fool, Jane Cooper, one of the few female examples we have of a role that was generally
given to men. The two seem to have had a close relationship, with Mary meeting Jane’s expenses for haircuts and illness. Fools were not just entertainers, they were something of an emotional safety valve. It is probable that as a child Mary enjoyed the antics of her father’s court jesters, even if there was no fool officially attached to her household.

  There are no records of Mary having contact with other children or being educated with them, unlike her siblings Elizabeth and Edward two decades later.This is not conclusive proof that she grew up in complete isolation, and it is possible that she knew the daughters of her aunt Mary. Her earliest relationship, if it can be called that, with another child came in 1517, when she was named as godmother for her cousin, Frances Brandon, daughter of Mary Tudor and Charles Brandon. As young women in their teens, the cousins spent considerable amounts of time in each other’s company. It may be that they saw each other occasionally when younger. Fate would strain their relationship to the limits, but not, finally, undermine it.

  Mary’s life was always peripatetic; she had no fixed abode. From her earliest days she moved from palace to palace, more in the summer than the winter, frequently close to her parents but not often staying with them. Most of her summer residences as a very small child were in the western Home Counties, where her father loved to hunt. In general, things were arranged so that Katherine could visit easily whenever she chose. But it was not her mother who saw the baby Mary from early childhood into womanhood.That responsibility lay with the countess of Salisbury, who was the main direct influence on the princess in the formative years of her life. It was a close and affectionate relationship that Mary never forgot, even when anguish and then death parted her from the woman who had raised her.