by Linda Porter
Before the Renaissance, women had been seen not so much as second-class citizens as a subspecies. They were the living embodiment of the biblical Eve, an outgrowth of the male that was tainted by sin. Their weakness was explored in the French work The Romance of the Rose, which, despite its pretty medieval title, saw women as defiled.The suggestion that such creatures were scarcely fit to inhabit the same world as men was challenged, not surprisingly, by women themselves, notably Christine de Pisan, in her Book of the Ladies, written in 1405. Once the debate was opened, the general climate of questioning which characterised the Renaissance had led to the topic recurring and male as well as female writers taking up the pen.6 Some even argued that women were superior to men.
Vives upheld this view, saying that women often exceeded men in their intellectual capacity.The problem, as he and many contemporaries saw it, was not their minds, but their bodies: ‘In the education of a woman the principal and, I might say, the only concern should be the preservation of chastity.’ There are seven pages in The Education of a Christian Woman on the virtues of virginity, and the overall assessment of the carnal weakness of the sex is highly pessimistic.Women were to be kept away from men at the onset of puberty: ‘During that period they are more inclined to lust.’ How to cope with these sudden, raging sexual appetites that consumed previously innocent girls? Vives’s philosophy did not lend itself to sex education.7 The best approach was through diet. Frequent fasts were beneficial and ‘a light, plain and not highly seasoned diet’ was recommended. One fears that girls brought up in this way, struggling with the hormonal changes of puberty, would have had little enjoyment of life, but it was not all deprivation.Water was the best drink, but a little wine or beer was permissible. The importance of sleep was also recognised: ‘The sleep of a virgin should not be long but not less than what is good for her health.’ It was an austere regimen and not to be relieved by the frivolity of nice clothes or any jewellery other than simple adornment. Silks and fine linens were too worldly and cosmetics vile - rouge and white lead had no place on a Christian face. But worse than all of these was idleness of mind and body because it could easily introduce a girl to completely unacceptable pastimes such as cards and dice.The mere thought of the gaming table appalled Vives: ‘What will a woman be able to learn or think about, who gives herself to gambling?’ he lamented.
The princess for whom these blandishments were intended clearly did not read the distinguished humanist’s writings too closely. Or perhaps she did, but could not really see herself as Vives’s prototype. In truth, not much of it was relevant to her. Mary was a great lady, a future queen, leading a life of luxury and complexity beyond the imagination of ordinary people. She was expected to dress superbly and wear gorgeous jewels, to symbolise power and magnificence in a way that all her father’s subjects, from the highest to the lowest in the land, would understand. She might be a weak woman as far as the theory went, but the real princess was a person apart, for whom Vives’s images of simplicity had no meaning.The moral precepts (and they were important) aside, she would not have recognised this colourless, idealised figure so diligently constructed in The Education of a Christian Woman. Her life was privileged, comfortable and predictable. Much was expected of her and she was carefully nurtured to meet these expectations, but austerity was not something she knew as a child. Attention was certainly paid to her diet, which was not as rich as an adult’s, but she was spared the lightheadedness of regular fasting recommended by Vives. As the head of her own court, she was served separately, with as many as 35 different dishes to choose from. This might make a fussy eater, and Mary does seem to have become difficult where food was concerned in her later teens, but that was partly through stress and ill health.
During her time in Wales, the array of offerings had more to do with etiquette than with choice. This was how a princess was served. But variety there was in plenty: seasonal fruit and all sorts of meat and game, desserts and cheese.The ambiance in which Mary ate was also carefully considered. Despite popular Hollywood myths of the Tudors, and especially Henry VIII, as gargantuan eaters with the table manners of swine, dining was intended to be a civilised experience for Mary. Her meals were to be taken with ‘comfortable, joyous and merrier communication in all honourable and virtuous manner’. And, in an age when personal cleanliness was inhibited by the sheer weight of fancy and heavy clothing, not to mention the problems of bathing in draughty, poorly heated rooms, Mary’s servants were to make sure that she achieved standards of hygiene that would have pleasedVives. Careful attention was to be given ‘unto the cleanliness and well wearing of her garments and apparel, both of her chamber and body, so that everything about her be sweet, clean and wholesome … as to so great a princess doth appertain, and all corruptions, evil airs and things noisome and displeasing to be forborne and eschewed’.8
It was in the area of her own amusements that Mary diverged most dramatically from the life of Vives’s Christian woman. From her early teens, she adored the very pastime the Spanish educationist had so abhorred. She became an inveterate gambler. Her passion for cards and dice never faded. She was not, and never would be, the one-dimensional girl who could only be fulfilled through domesticity. A princess has the power to follow her own inclinations, and Mary preferred a wager to the embroidery needle. On the scale of priorities for equipping her for her adult life as the heir to the throne, it hardly seemed to matter.
In this situation without precedent, the content of the princess’s syllabus was all important.Yet here, key issues were fudged. It was not in Vives’s brief to address the political implications of Mary’s status, and his writing implied that Mary would marry, an assumption that provided an inbuilt solution, or, at least, a deferment of difficult decisions about her role as head of state.Vives’s work was as much moral as practical, but his suggestions for the substance of Mary’s education, the actual reading and study, may well have been followed by her tutors. They certainly reflected the belief in a classically based education that characterised the teaching of royal offspring throughout the courts of Europe. The emphasis was on the great Latin writers, St Augustine, Boetius, Tertullian, Cicero and Seneca, and in reading Latin translations of the Greek philosophers such as Plato. The Bible was also a favourite source of reading matter. Lighter material did, of course, exist, in the form of chivalric romances, but Vives felt that these were unsuitable for girls, who might get carried away with ideas of courtly love. Licentious books, such as Boccaccio’s Decameron, were definitely to be avoided. This all sounds very dry;Vives’s syllabus, though not perhaps suppressing all imagination and enquiry, especially in a good intellect, was nevertheless unlikely to foster these qualities.Whether it was followed more or less closely, Mary developed as a girl with a sound knowledge of the great writers of antiquity, who could translate to and from Latin with considerable facility and who had an abiding love of books. Her study of French continued, under the guidance of Giles Duwes, who had been one of the gentlemen of her chamber but was now given accreditation as her French teacher. Apart from Mary, there was not much call for his services in Wales.
As she grew up, it was evident that Mary was a credit to her tutors. She expressed herself with clarity and elegance. Her hand was clean and legible, much easier to read because it is personal handwriting, rather than the stylised hands used for official 16th-century correspondence. If not truly precocious, she was certainly gifted and her progress seems to have satisfied both of her parents.
Mary’s studies continued to occupy her mother’s mind even after she had left for Wales and Katherine could no longer participate directly in her education.There was regret but also optimism.The appointment of Richard Fetherstone seems to have pleased the queen, who was confident that he could improve Mary’s Latin:‘As for your writing in Latin, I am glad that ye shall change from me to Master Federston [sic], for that shall do you much good to learn by him to write aright.’ But she would like to see some of Mary’s work once the tutor had corrected it, ‘
for it shall be a great comfort to me to see you keep your Latin and fair writing and all’. This wistful undertone and references to her husband and daughter’s ‘long absence’ as well as her own health, which she describes as only ‘meetly’ good, tell us that the queen was far from happy at the parting with her daughter.9 The circumstances of Mary’s move had made her angry at first, and regretful, but in the end the honour accorded her daughter must surely have given her satisfaction.
Not since Prince Arthur’s sadly brief sojourn had there been a member of the royal family living in Wales. How comfortable Katherine was in discussing this with her daughter we can only guess. She had long been Henry VIII’s wife, not Arthur’s widow, but it seems unlikely she would have dwelt on the topic, and Mary, with the innate understanding that her upbringing had already given her, probably did not press her mother for information. Ludlow Castle, where Katherine and her first husband lived, was the traditional seat of princes of Wales, but it was in desperate need of repairs. Though these were undertaken and Mary’s council was based at Ludlow, there is no evidence that Mary actually lived there during her time in the Marches.Tickenhill, in Worcestershire, was a palace that she used, as well as Hartlebury. But in the summer of 1525 she went first to Thornbury Castle, not far from Bristol.10 On a clear day, taking one of the walks prescribed as beneficial to her health and overall contentment, the princess and the countess of Salisbury could have looked out over the lovely surrounding countryside and seen the Severn estuary and the hills of Wales, Mary’s principality, in the distance. Margaret Pole may have had mixed feelings about her destination. Thornbury had been built by the executed duke of Buckingham, whose fatal clash with Henry VIII first parted the princess and herself four years earlier. On arrival, she was no doubt too busy to concern herself overmuch about the castle’s builder, and she seems to have found her time in the Marches pleasant enough.
The official line on Mary’s move was straightforward; Wales needed government: ‘forasmuch as by reason of the long absence of any Prince making continual residence either in the Principality of Wales or in the marches of the same, the good order, quiet and tranquillity of the countries thereabout’, it was claimed, had been ‘greatly altered and subverted’, and the administration of justice had suffered.11 The statement overlooked the reasons for the long absence, the lack of any prince of Wales for a generation. And there was ambiguity in Mary’s new responsibilities; the title of ‘Princess of Wales’ was never formally bestowed on her, though she was a Tudor and had more Welsh blood than any other prince sent to Wales, except for Prince Arthur himself. She was, though, often referred to as princess of Wales until 1533, and seems to have adopted that style herself.The move reinforced her position as Henry’s only legitimate child and his presumptive heir, but it did not mean that Henry was comfortable with the inevitability of her succession.
The international situation in the momentous year of 1525 had changed the balance of European power decisively in favour of the emperor, and Henry had ample reason to reflect on what this meant for his kingdom. In February, on the plains of northern Italy, Francis I of France suffered a crippling defeat by the imperial forces at the battle of Pavia. His army of 28,000 men was all but annihilated, and Francis himself taken as a prisoner to Madrid. He managed to negotiate his release, at the price of giving up all claims to Italy and sending his two eldest sons into an honourable captivity for several years, as hostages.This level of personal misfortune was something that Henry, for all his difficulties, would never know. Yet while the outcome was a triumph for Charles V, it did not necessarily sit well with the king of England. The rivalry between Charles and Francis suited him, allowing him to act as mediator and ensuring that he was courted by both sides. Now Charles, all at once disturbingly powerful, did not need him. The impact this would have on England was uncertain. It brought the absence of a male heir into sharp perspective once again.
Troubled by what might lie ahead, Henry decided to give both his children, the legitimate Mary and her half-brother, Henry Fitzroy, places in the administration of the realm. Katherine was appalled at this elevation of the king’s bastard son, who had been living quietly away from his now safely married young mother.12 Uncharacteristically, for she knew her husband and his likely reaction very well, the queen lost control of her emotions and let her displeasure be known.This outspokenness did not sit well with Henry or with Cardinal Wolsey, who had been charged with the supervision of young Henry Fitzroy’s upbringing. Disconcertingly, as far as Katherine was concerned,Wolsey was godfather to both Mary and young Henry.There was no love lost between the cardinal and the queen, who had spent much of Henry’s reign warily circling one another.The role of Henry Fitzroy was another area of conflict between them and, on this occasion, Katherine saw herself as the loser. Her perception was not necessarily correct, but the insult mattered a great deal to her at the time.
Of course, a nine-year-old girl and a six-year-old boy were not expected to execute power themselves, but they represented the king as important figureheads.Their wider educations, through observation and the association of their names with the exercise of authority, would also benefit. So, as Mary prepared to turn west, Bessie Blount’s son was given the double dukedom of Richmond and Somerset, created earl of Nottingham and Knight of the Garter and named as lord admiral of England. On 28 August 1525, with a larger retinue than Mary, he took up residence in Yorkshire as head of the Council of the North, an institution that had fallen into abeyance. Some may have seen in this an indication that Henry intended to make him his heir.They were reading too much into the situation, as it turned out. Henry put great stock in legitimacy. There was no precedent for an illegitimate son succeeding. It called into question the very institution of monarchy and Henry was a stickler for moral and legal principles when it came to the future of his throne and dynasty.
Mary was probably unaware of any of these developments.They had no direct impact on her own life or status as she knew it. She may not even have known of her younger brother’s existence at this stage. But Katherine of Aragon saw the boy as a threat. It could even have been her outburst against the elevation of the duke of Richmond which sealed Henry’s decision to separate her from Mary and let both of his children develop well away from the court. Mary does seem to have missed her mother initially, or, at least, to have been concerned about her welfare. She may have sensed the queen’s reluctance when they parted, as she certainly wrote swiftly, enquiring about her mother’s health and updating her on the progress with Richard Fetherstone. Her attentiveness gave Katherine some solace, as did the presence of Juan Luis Vives himself at court. But the queen’s isolation was growing and the separation from Mary only underlined this. Katherine realised she would need to adjust; yet she was pensive rather than despairing and saw no reason why, if she continued to show the forbearance she had uncharacteristically abandoned in the summer of 1525, all would not continue as before.
Early in August 1525 Mary and her senior household officers and councillors were gathered together at The More, Wolsey’s residence near Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire. Over lunch, their duties were outlined by the cardinal, rather as the board of a large business nowadays is briefed by its chief executive. Wolsey was responsible for all the arrangements and appointments for Mary’s new role, and he was keen to ensure that everyone understood what was expected of them. This would have included Mary herself, the centre of all this attention. On 12 August the princess and her retinue began their journey westward. It must have been an exciting moment in Mary’s life, as all the carts and provisions, the great servants and the humble ones - her affinity, as they were known - left Wolsey’s elegant home for parts of England that many had not seen before. Clad in Mary’s personal colours of blue and green, the princess’s retinue moved by easy stages to Thornbury, where they arrived on 24 August.
Although many appointees to Mary’s new household were already living in the Marches, her train was impressive. Certainly the household itself was
greatly expanded, officially numbering 304 persons. Reestablished at the same time to undertake the practical business of government in Wales was a separate Council of Wales and the Marches, the counterpart of the young duke of Richmond’s Council of the North. Its president, John Veysey, bishop of Exeter, was already over 60 years old and better known for his courtliness than his spirituality.13 Mary, however, seems to have viewed him with favour. His delightful manners and love of ceremony probably appealed to her. Like many people who were with her in her childhood, he was not forgotten by her, and she made sure that he was restored to the bishopric of Exeter, from which he resigned during her brother’s reign, when she became queen. By that time he was approaching 90. As president of the council, Veysey had a substantial staff. He was supported by a chancellor, six lawyers and a secretary as well as the ceremonial posts of a herald, a pursuivant and two serjeants-at-arms. A suite of 41 personal servants was assigned to the council itself. In practice, there was a blurring of distinction between appointments; some of the leading members of Mary’s household acted as councillors themselves if the need arose for greater membership to deal with specific aspects of administration.
