Mary Tudor: The First Queen

by Linda Porter

  Yet although she was able to fill her time mostly as she wished, in the company of those who were sympathetic to her situation, there is a pervasive air of sadness about Mary in her twenties. This is very apparent in the 1544 portrait, which shows a woman still youthful for 28.The eyes, though, lack sparkle and the downcast mouth betrays what she has suffered. It is still possible to see the attractive princess she once was, but she is visibly fading. She knows that life is passing her by. At the time of the painting, she was firmly established back at court, but much had happened in between to explain the underlying dejection caught so well by the painter.

  Before Katherine Parr’s influence brought Mary finally back into Henry VIII’s favour she lived comfortably, but uneasily. Her relationship with her father was like that of a well-treated hostage, and she was only too aware of this, as her resigned and rather bitter comment to Marillac shows.There was much talk of marriage - in fact hardly a year went by without some negotiation - but Mary’s assessment that her father would never find her a husband because he did not want to let her go was correct. He treated her exactly as he had done when she was a child. She was a diplomatic tool, convenient to support his increasingly unrealistic attempts to be a major player in Europe.

  In the autumn of 1536, as she struggled to come to terms with her reduced status, she was still being referred to as ‘the princess’ in letters from Henry to his ambassadors in France. It did not take long for discussions to resume about a possible marriage with the duke of Orléans.The use of the term ‘princess’ was a brazen piece of double-talk, presumably intended to reassure the French that they were not getting devalued goods, even though Mary herself had just been browbeaten into giving up the title that had been hers since birth.9 She realised that she was only a pawn in her father’s efforts to retain his influence as a power-broker in Europe.The wonder is that the emperor and the king of France continued to play the game at all. Their suspicion of each other outweighed any rational analysis of the harm - or help - that Henry could offer. Meanwhile, if he could be induced to part with his daughter on favourable terms, there was always the possibility of her claim to the throne being validated. So they continued their embassies and proposals, mindful of the fact that the German princes were also expressing an interest. In 1541, the French went so far as to make discreet enquiries about Mary’s childbearing prospects and were reassured by an informant described as a lady of Mary’s chamber. If Henry had really wanted to find a husband for Mary, there was no shortage of potential suitors.

  The name that occurred most frequently, right up to the time when she became queen, was Dom Luis of Portugal. This brother-in-law of Charles V was a widower ten years older than Mary, and the efforts to bring about a marriage between them were almost farcically protracted. It was natural for the emperor to support Dom Luis as a candidate for his cousin’s hand. He was Catholic, a family member and could provide Mary with a stable and comfortable life. Away from the constant tensions of her existence in England, Mary might have become a Portuguese princess and recaptured some of her mother’s Iberian inheritance. She knew better than to express any opinion where marriage was concerned, however, and Dom Luis did not press his suit vigorously. In fact, he never remarried, which looks like a preference for the single state.

  But while marriage discussions were carried on with France and the empire at diplomatic level, one aspiring bridegroom decided to stake his claim in person. This was highly unusual and raised a few eyebrows. Duke Philip of Bavaria, a German prince who proudly announced that he never heard mass, came to England in the winter of 1539, offering his military service to Henry VIII and his hand to Mary. He evidently made quite an impression, so much so that Thomas Wriothesley was dispatched to Hertford Castle, where Mary was living, to raise the matter with the princess herself.

  It must have been a strange meeting, this able servant of the Crown and one of Cromwell’s closest associates, discussing with the Lady Mary the possibility of her marrying a Lutheran. Mary already knew Wriothesley well, and if he had established a rapport with her he would have been a good choice for a rather delicate mission. Wriothesley was a handsome man with a commanding presence, and although he became associated with religious conservatism in the 1540s, he was there to try to gauge her reactions to a possible match with a heretic.

  If opposition had been anticipated, none was offered. Mary did observe, in respect of Duke Philip’s beliefs, that ‘she would prefer never to enter that kind of religion’, but she would obey her father’s will in the matter. And she agreed to meet Philip, who was keen to woo her without an intermediary. Perhaps her curiosity was aroused by this romantic gesture. The more realistic part of her nature may also have reminded her that she was 23 and that no one else had made such an effort to gain her hand. The duke offered a means of escape from her father, and there was little enough to keep her in England.

  On 26 December 1539, Mary walked with Philip of Bavaria in the gardens of the abbot of Westminster. The wintry surroundings were a contrast to the warmth of the duke’s approach to his intended bride. She spoke no German and he no English but, as educated people, they were able to converse in Latin. An interpreter filled in any gaps when Latin did not suffice, and they seem to have communicated effectively. Philip gave her a magnificent diamond cross with a pendant pearl as a token of his affection and repeated that he wished to marry her. He was also bold enough to kiss her, something which no man who was a stranger had ever done. Mary, whether disarmed or merely disconcerted, did not repulse him. It was for the king to decide, she said, and she would obey him. At no time did she show actual dismay. Perhaps she was a little flattered, despite her pride. He was 13 years older, but he was the only man ever to make a personal appeal to marry her.

  A delighted Philip returned to Henry at Greenwich convinced that he could move things to a swift conclusion. A marriage treaty was drawn up which stated that Mary would waive all her rights to the English succession and bring with her a dowry of £7,000 (just under £3 million). The French and the imperialists, both taken by surprise, expected that the marriage would be celebrated within weeks. By mid-January 1540, Chapuys believed it had already taken place. It was distasteful and worrying, but it would have to be accepted.The rumours, however, were wrong. Something in Henry’s terms did not sit well with Duke Philip and he had already left the country, without his bride. Discouraged but not defeated, he tried twice more during the year, but by then attention was entirely focused on the king’s disastrous fourth marriage to Anne of Cleves, which may have ruined Mary’s chances. In 1543, the duke resumed his quest, when he and Mary met for a second time. Again, he departed without her.The wait for a husband continued.

  Mary’s passivity during the fruitless rounds of marriage discussions does not necessarily mean that she was happy to remain unmarried. It was, more likely, a prudent way of keeping emotions in check, of preventing the dashing of hopes. Nor did she wish to convey anything to her father other than complete obedience.The small amount of diversion offered by Duke Philip was a brief enough lifting of dark clouds. All around her, as the new decade dawned, were the reminders of how unpredictable and dangerous life at court could be. Her father was ageing and not in good health. But this only increased his ruthless and revengeful nature. Seeing what he had done to those she counted as friends, she had no intention of testing his patience herself.

  There were clear reasons why she took the path of least resistance. By 1541, five of those who had been her supporters in 1536 were dead, accused of conspiracy and treason. Henry Courtenay, marquess of Exeter, Lord Montague (the eldest son of the countess of Salisbury), Sir Edward Neville and Sir Nicholas Carew were executed in 1539. Gertrude Courtenay, marchioness of Exeter, the faithful friend of Katherine of Aragon and Mary, was imprisoned for a while in the Tower and her young son, Edward, for much longer. But much worse for Mary than even the loss of these representatives of the old Catholic nobility was the execution in 1541 of Margaret Pole. She had been arrested at t
he same time as the others, when fears of a Catholic backlash and attack from Europe caused a climate of fear at court. Her position was compromised because her exiled son, Reginald Pole, was sent by the pope to try to persuade both Francis I and Charles V that the time was ripe for a concerted attack on the heretical kingdom of England. He failed, but his attempts cost his family and their associates dear. Margaret Pole, countess of Salisbury, languished in the Tower for two years until, one June morning, she was peremptorily told that she was about to die.

  And it was to be a terrible death, not the swift oblivion that this elderly noblewoman, her entire life passed in the shadow of suspicious kings, deserved. She told the officers of the Tower, who came to fetch her, that she found the sudden pronouncement of the death sentence very strange, not knowing what crime she had committed. But she was composed when she walked to the small block, and there ‘she commended her soul to God and desired those present to pray for the king, queen, prince and princess’. Her last thoughts were of Mary, the girl she had prepared for the throne of England. Then an apprentice executioner, a young lad with slight experience and less skill, butchered her, hacking her head and shoulders to pieces.The extreme violence of her end mirrored that of her father, Clarence, and the turbulent century into which she had been born. She was the last aristocratic victim of the Wars of the Roses.

  The knowledge that the woman who had brought her up had ultimately paid with her life, and in such a barbarous way, was too much for Mary to bear. For some time after the news of the countess’s death was brought to her, she was very ill.

  The extinction of key members of the old aristocracy was only partly the result of invasion scares. There was also a settling of scores, both for Henry VIII and Cromwell. They had not forgotten 1536. But neither had other men on the increasingly divided council, and they were no friends to the newly created earl of Essex. By the summer of 1540, a combination of circumstances at home and abroad allowed Cromwell’s opponents, led by the duke of Norfolk, to move against him. It was not merely his power they disliked but his continued support for new religious ideas. Their success, which seemed unlikely at the beginning of 1540, was blessed by the conjuncture of a set of events reminiscent of Cromwell’s coup against Anne Boleyn, and having about as much justification in reality.

  It used to be said that Cromwell’s fall was brought about by the debacle of Henry VIII’s fourth marriage, to the German princess Anne of Cleves, but this sorry affair was the occasion rather than the cause. True, the king held his minister responsible for the excruciating embarrassment that the marriage caused him, but he was more concerned by Cromwell’s attempts to push the Reformation still further in England. Greater doctrinal reforms were opposed by Henry and by Norfolk’s affinity, which included the clever but irascible churchman Stephen Gardiner. Cromwell knew his danger and he tried, with all his habitual cunning and resource, to fight back. At one point in the spring of 1540, it looked as if he might have turned the tables, but Norfolk had an unsuspected advantage; he could provide the king with an alternative wife.

  She was another of his nieces and her name was Katherine Howard. Very young (possibly no more than 15), petite but with a full figure, she was as sexually attractive to Henry as the unfortunate Anne of Cleves had been repellent.10 It is ironic that Cromwell’s fall should have been hastened by this pert though not very bright girl, but her charms proved the impetus Norfolk had been looking for.When Cromwell was arrested in the council chamber on 10 June 1540, Norfolk himself pulled the badge of St George from the minister’s neck. He was taken to the Tower and executed on 28 July. The last of the innumerable services he had done for Henry VIII was to provide the detailed information needed to secure the Cleves divorce.

  The man Mary viewed as her saviour was gone and with him her political anchor. Though she mourned Margaret Pole more, she had needed Thomas Cromwell for guidance. Only Chapuys and her own judgement were left to her now. Part of that judgement needed to be applied to her relationships with the two women who were briefly her father’s fourth and fifth wives.

  Mary and Elizabeth attended the wedding of Henry and Anne of Cleves and both subsequently got on well with her. But Henry married her only with the most extreme reluctance.The causes of his aversion have never been entirely clear. He had found the celebrated portrait of her by Holbein pleasing, but the lady herself did not meet expectations. It was not love at first sight, but utter revulsion. Anne was unsophisticated and lacked small talk, and she committed an unfortunate blunder when she did not even recognise the king when he first came to meet her at Rochester. This was hardly Anne’s fault - Henry had indulged in his rather juvenile penchant for disguise and was dressed up as Robin Hood, probably not a well-known figure in Cleves - but it was a bad start.Yet it seems to have been her body odour as much as anything else which deterred him. As nobody else commented on this we can only assume that Henry had a very sensitive nose. After consulting with his ministers as to whether the marriage could be stopped, and being told it could not, he took the plunge and married her early on the morning of 6 January 1540. Preoccupied with his own situation, he was not going to give much attention to dealing with Mary’s marital prospects, even though he was being pressed by Philip of Bavaria. Perhaps he felt that one German match was enough for the time being.

  Anne was a tall, slim woman with fair hair and a face described by the French ambassador as ‘confident and resolute’. Even allowing for some licence with the paintbrush, it is hard to understand, looking at Holbein’s portrait, why she unnerved - and apparently unmanned - Henry so. Whatever the cause, he could not consummate the marriage and even told his lords that he thought, because of Anne’s ‘slack belly and breasts’, that she was not a virgin.This ungentlemanly verdict sealed the fate of their brief union. By late spring Katherine Howard had been dangled in front of Henry and Anne was divorced, after some initial opposition, with a comfortable settlement. Once she was no longer in his bed, Henry seems to have got on rather well with her. There are varying accounts of whether Anne was happy with her divorce or not, but in view of what happened to her successor, any anger she felt must surely only have been temporary.

  Mary remained on good terms with Anne of Cleves but her relationship with Katherine Howard began uneasily in the hot summer of 1540. Katherine may have been as much as ten years younger than Mary herself, an age gap that made her status as stepmother almost ridiculous. The young Elizabeth was given trinkets and petted by the new queen, but it was much harder to win Mary over. In the autumn of 1540, four months after her marriage to Henry, tension between the two women was high enough for the king to threaten the removal of two of Mary’s favourite maidservants. Chapuys reported that Katherine was offended because Mary did not treat her with the same respect as her two predecessors. This sounds perfectly plausible; it would be surprising if Mary did not have reservations about Katherine, who had been, up till then, an obscure member of a clan that Mary had no cause to love. But common sense prevailed.There was no point in feuding with Katherine Howard, and the queen was essentially good natured. Mary’s personal dislikes could be deep-seated, but Katherine must have won her over. By early 1541 any ill feeling was put behind them and Mary was finally given permission to reside permanently at court. In the summer she accompanied Henry and Katherine on part of their progress through the north of England. How much she enjoyed this we cannot tell, but its acknowledgement of her prominent place in royal circles must have been a relief. To Mary, like almost all those around the court, her father must have seemed blissfully happy with his young and lively wife. She - like him - knew nothing of Katherine Howard’s steamy past.

  The revelation of the sordid goings-on in the household of the dowager duchess of Norfolk, where Katherine lived as a girl, were prompted by those who disliked the ascendancy of the Howards and the brake that had been put on further religious changes.There was also an element of settling scores, as Katherine had dealt rather heartlessly with some of the men in her past. But her beha
viour as queen, when she conducted an intense relationship with Thomas Culpepper, was astonishingly reckless. Even more bizarre was the support and encouragement she had received in this liaison from Lady Jane Rochford, the closest confidante among her ladies.

  Cranmer, one of the prime movers against Katherine Howard, was discomfited when Henry at first refused point blank to believe the charges laid out against his ‘jewel of womanhood’. Further evidence, much of it acknowledged by the terrified queen herself, convinced Henry that he had married a promiscuous little strumpet who could not have loved him at all. Katherine was hastily removed to the convent at Syon House. Like her cousin Anne Boleyn, she may have clung to the hope that she could avoid death but known in her heart, from the first moment of her interrogation, that she would not be allowed to live. As early as 11 November 1541, when details of the queen’s detention were seeping out to international observers, Marillac told Francis I: ‘The way taken is the same as with Queen Anne who was beheaded.’ Katherine’s exhilarating but brief reign as queen consort was over: ‘she has taken no kind of pastime but kept in her chamber, whereas before she did nothing but dance and rejoice, and now when the musicians come they are told that it is no more the time to dance’.11 On 10 February 1542 Katherine was taken by river to the Tower. Knowing that this really did signal the end, she put up some resistance and had to be manhandled on to the boat. Three days later, subdued and proper in her final speech, she was executed with Lady Rochford.This sinister and enigmatic woman, who had a perverse delight in compromising others, had been on the fringes of Mary’s circle of friends. It was as well for Mary that she did not get any closer.

  In 1536 the poet Thomas Wyatt the elder had written despairingly of the ‘bloody days’ that took the lives of Anne Boleyn and those accused with her. At least they had a trial; Katherine Howard was condemned by Act of Attainder. With her passing came to an end a period of three years that was bloodier still.