Mary Tudor: The First Queen

by Linda Porter

  Henry decided it would be better to have Mary away from court while the proceedings against the disgraced queen were completed. She was sent to join Prince Edward, escorted on the journey by Sir John Dudley, a soldier and politician who had briefly served Anne of Cleves as her master-of-horse. Disappointed by the Cleves divorce, Dudley began to wonder whether his career at court would ever prosper. He may not have regarded accompanying the Lady Mary on this occasion as a significant step in the right direction. Neither could have anticipated that, 11 years later, when he was the most powerful man in England and she was a rebel, he would ride out of London to meet her again.

  The king was very low for much of the following year, as he struggled to adjust to the knowledge that he had been so mistaken in Katherine Howard. But, as 1542 drew to a close, the ever-vigilant Chapuys noticed that he seemed to have moved on: ‘now all is changed and order is already taken that the princess shall go to court this feast, accompanied with a great number of ladies; and they work night and day at Hampton Court to finish her lodgings’.12 The imperial ambassador evidently believed that Henry’s desire to have his daughter with him for the Christmas season was a positive indication that he was better. He had clearly decided that Mary would help him forget the past, and this was a sign of her much-strengthened position. Perhaps the king did look forward to Mary’s company, to hearing her sing, watching her dance and entertain him with her musical talents. On the other hand, he may have been even more interested in the ladies who surrounded her. One, especially, caught his attention at around this time. This was Lady Latimer, the wife of a northern lord who had made up for being implicated in the Pilgrimage of Grace by fighting with the royal armies on the Scottish border in 1542. He was much older than his wife, and it was widely known that he was very ill, so ill, in fact, that he was unlikely to survive. When he died in February 1543 his wife, born Katherine Parr, became a widow for the second time. She had already determined to stay in London, at court, and appears to have joined Mary’s household shortly before Lord Latimer’s death. Suddenly, it was remarked that the king came at least once a day to see his daughter. Mary may have found this increased parental attention gratifying, but she may also have guessed that she was not actually the main reason for her father’s sociability. Henry was clearly interested in Lady Latimer.

  He was not the only one. Pleasing in appearance - to modern eyes she appears the most attractive of Henry’s wives - and warm in personality, Katherine Parr was a trim redhead with a considerable sense of style. Much has been made of the fact that she appealed to Henry because she was ‘mature’, but she was certainly not matronly. At 30, she was younger than Anne Boleyn had been at the time of her marriage to the king.There was also a passionate and impulsive side to her nature, for she had fallen deeply in love with the king’s brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Seymour. A rather disreputable charmer at whose feet sensible women seemed to swoon, Seymour was still unmarried at 34 and looking for a wife, preferably as high born and rich as possible. Katherine Parr did not fit into either of those categories; she was the daughter of a courtier from Kendal in Westmorland and the money she inherited from Lord Latimer was adequate rather than generous. As Thomas Seymour gave every appearance of reciprocating her affection, it must be supposed that he wanted her for herself. Unless, of course, he saw her as an entrée to Princess Mary. He had previously tried to woo the young Mary Howard, the duke of Richmond’s widow, but was rebuffed by the duchess and warned off by the earl of Surrey, her brother. The Howards were not keen to be allied with the Seymours, whom they considered upstarts.

  It is possible that Seymour’s obvious courtship of Katherine Parr heightened the king’s own feelings, in a manner reminiscent of his brush with Sir Thomas Wyatt over Anne Boleyn years before. A rival in love made the lady all the more desirable. When she was told that the king wanted her as his sixth wife, Katherine’s reaction was, at first, despairing. The opportunity of a love match with a handsome, virile man was suddenly replaced by the contemplation of her name being added to the list of Henry’s wives.The precedents for surviving this dubious honour were discouraging, even if the unkind advance of the years suggested that the king would not, himself, see his dotage. Age had not withered Henry; instead, it had fattened him. Pain and ill health made his notorious temper still more unpredictable and his reputation as a husband was the talk of Europe. Unhappily for Katherine Parr, she could not afford the delicious quip attributed to Christina of Lorraine, once mentioned as a bride for Henry, who said she must decline because she would rather keep her head. Katherine’s desire to stay at court had come back to bite her in the most unexpected way. There was no practical line of escape. She must have known she could not turn him down. Her sister Anne had served most of Henry’s queens and her brother William was ambitious. Their lives, as well as her own, would be ruined if she did not acquiesce. After an agonising period, she also convinced herself that her marriage was the will of God. Already attracted to the ideas of the religious reformers, she decided she would use her position as queen to influence the king away from the conservatism of the Howards and their allies. So Katherine Parr, well educated, twice married and, though childless, an experienced stepmother of adult children, married Henry VIII in the Queen’s Closet at Hampton Court on 12 July 1543.The Lady Mary was one of only 20 people who attended the ceremony, and she looked on with pleasure.The new queen’s mother, Maud Parr, had been one of Katherine of Aragon’s ladies-in-waiting, and Mary must surely have remembered her. It is highly likely that Henry VIII’s first wife was godmother to his last. Finally, here was someone that his elder daughter could call a friend.

  Katherine Parr is often remembered for her religious interests and supposed nursing skills, as well as her success in re-establishing family harmony between Henry and his children. Her portrait in Lambeth Palace is of an intelligent, almost intense woman. Perhaps she is not quite lovely, but she is undoubtedly compelling. All of which makes her sound worthy but rather dull, but there was another side to her, the side that Thomas Seymour had already seen. She was also sensual, careful to make sure that her bedchamber was perfumed delicately and her person adorned with beautiful gowns and jewels. Katherine took her marriage vows, to be ‘bonny and buxom, in bed and in board’, seriously. There were many advantages, as she soon discovered, to being queen of England, and she was determined to make the most of them.

  There followed for Mary three and a half years of stability, the longest uninterrupted period of happiness that she would know for the rest of her life. Her stepmother was a cultured person with a warm heart, whose company was a delight, not a duty. When Mary and Elizabeth both accompanied the king and queen on the summer progress that followed the marriage, the atmosphere was familial, in contrast to the time exactly three years earlier when Mary had travelled with her besotted father and Katherine Howard. In the wider family circle, Margaret Douglas benefited from the arrival of the new queen as well. She had recouped her position again by 1543, when she became first lady-in-waiting to Katherine Parr. The following year, Henry finally found a husband for Margaret in Matthew Stewart, the Scottish earl of Lennox. But his own daughter remained unwedded.

  She may not have minded. Katherine and Mary were often together, sharing their love of clothes and precious stones, dancing and music, reading and conversation. Chapuys recognised from the outset the benefits to his princess of this affectionate relationship, and he was equally gratified by the queen’s pro-Habsburg stance. She went out of her way to make sure she saw him when he came to court and she made a superb impression on the duke of Najera when she entertained him, with Mary, in February 1544. And in this year, the last of his long sojourn as ambassador to England, Chapuys saw his princess legally restored, in name but not title, to her rightful place in the succession to the English throne, behind her brother and ahead of her sister. This belated acknowledgement of reality on the part of Henry VIII owed a great deal to his last wife’s influence.

  Mary observed a tactful publi
c silence about the revival of her prospects.Whether she spoke of the changes in private we do not know. The assumption must be that she was pleased, at least as much by the implied approval she now enjoyed in the eyes of her father, as in any contemplation that she might one day rule herself. That still seemed a prospect too distant to be worthy of much consideration. She may also have been absorbed at this time in her participation in another of the queen’s projects, a major work of literary translation inspired by Katherine’s interest in new learning. This was a translation into English of Erasmus’s Latin Paraphrases upon the New Testament. Mary undertook, at her stepmother’s request, the challenge of translating the paraphrase of St John’s gospel.The work kept her occupied for some while, until illness meant that her chaplain, Francis Mallett, had to complete it, but her contribution was much praised by Nicholas Udall, the editor of the series.This ‘peerless flower of virginity’, he wrote,‘doth now also confer the inestimable benefit of furthering both us and our posterity in the knowledge of God’s word and to the more clear understanding of God’s gospel’.

  How could Mary, the contrary Catholic queen of popular history, have become involved in such an undertaking and earned the approbation of those in the reforming circle around Katherine Parr? The answer lies in her humanist education and upbringing. Education and religion were so closely intertwined in 16th-century England that it appeared quite natural for a woman like Mary, who had always prided herself on her ability in Latin, to turn her attention to such a task. After years of relative intellectual deprivation, she would not shy away from the stimulus being offered. It has been suggested that she did not finish her translation of St John because she was deterred by the queen’s own evangelical leanings and the strongly reforming interests of all the other ladies in Katherine’s circle, with the exception of Lady Margaret Douglas.13 But she was definitely unwell again at the point that her completed input was expected. Her subsequent reluctance to be credited as the author, because she had not finished it, suggests scrupulous modesty rather than distaste. Katherine stepped in, determined to give Mary her due. After all, she had undertaken most of the work: ‘I do not see why you should repudiate that praise which all men justly confer on you,’ she told the princess. 14

  But Katherine’s confidence in her hold over her husband, fuelled by a successful interlude as regent when Henry went in person to prosecute the last of his wars in France, came close to destroying her.The religious conservatives, led by Bishop Gardiner (who had actually married Katherine to Henry), moved against her in the summer of 1546. Encouraged by a further decline in Henry’s health and his evident irritation at this wife’s literary prowess, her attempts to dispute with him and push him further down the road of reform, they nearly managed to get her arrested and put in the Tower. How the queen found out about the plot against her is not certain (John Foxe’s account of it makes dramatic and entertaining reading, though some elements of it may be fabricated), but she managed to remain surprisingly level-headed, despite her undoubted fear. 15 Pleading illness and contrition, asserting that she had only ever intended to distract her husband from his pain when they discussed religious matters, Katherine got herself back into Henry’s arms and saved her life.

  His attitude towards her, in the remaining months of his life, was at first one of indulgence. Then, as he realised that he was more seriously ill, he distanced himself from the queen and his children, concentrating his mind on the arrangements that would need to be made for his son’s minority. He passed his final Christmas at Whitehall, apart from Katherine and Mary, who were at Greenwich. On 11 January, the queen’s apartments were prepared for her arrival but it is not known whether she saw her husband after that date. Neither she nor any other members of his family were with him when he died on 28 January 1547, aged 56.

  Mary was not told of his death for several days, as the new men of the council nominated by Henry to govern in his son’s name took elaborate precautions to ensure that all was in place before the public announcement was made. She was angered by their dissimulation but there was nothing she could do about it. For the time being, she remained with the dead king’s widow, who had learned, to her chagrin, that she would not become regent for EdwardVI. True to his lifelong convictions about the inadequacy of women as rulers, Henry made sure Katherine Parr would have no role in the government of the country. Yet however wary the young king’s councillors were, nothing could alter the fact that Henry’s elder daughter was the heiress to the throne. He had reiterated this in his will. And he had also left her a rich and independent woman. All her life, she had been his property. Now, she was free at last.

  PART THREE

  The Excluded Heiress 1547-53

  Chapter Six

  The Defiant Sister

  ‘If we were to grant you license to break our laws, would it not be an encouragement to others to do likewise?’

  Edward VI to Mary, 1551

  Mary was three weeks short of her 31st birthday when her father died. His passing was momentous for her on a personal level, as well as for England, now facing the uncertainty of a long royal minority. Henry VIII had been the major figure in her life, the cause of much unhappiness and oppression. He defined who she was-a king’s daughter and a great lady, though not a princess of England. Yet in her own eyes, and those of her cousin, Charles V, she had never ceased to be a child born in true matrimony.The imperial court did not immediately recognise Edward VI as king, because he had been born to a father who had broken with Rome and the legitimacy of his succession was not assumed, even though Henry commended his son to the emperor on his deathbed. Writing from Brussels, Charles’ sister, Mary of Hungary, who was regent of the Netherlands, preserved a carefully non-committal air: ‘We make no mention at present of the young prince,’ she wrote to Ambassador Van der Delft in London,‘as we are ignorant as yet whether or not he will be recognised as king, and we await intelligence of the emperor’s intentions.’ She was equally reticent about Mary, noting: ‘We likewise refrain from sending you any letters for our cousin, the Princess Mary, as we do not yet know how she will be treated.’1 The regent’s caution was understandable but also unnecessary. Charles soon discovered that Mary was not going to challenge for the throne; she considered her brother the rightful heir and she accepted the Henrician religious settlement, which made the monarch supreme head of the Church, but had not embraced the more extreme forms of the new religious ideas, such as the abolition of the mass.What she does not seem to have anticipated adequately is that the men who now held power were determined to move forward with religious reform, quickly and comprehensively, and that their policies would make her life extremely uncomfortable once again.

  Whether she felt deep sorrow at the old king’s death we shall never know. Her reaction seems to have been measured, at least for public consumption. She was apparently more irritated by the delay in receiving the news than prostrate with grief on hearing it. Probably her reaction was one of relief mingled with regret; she could not have avoided thinking about the past and the treatment she and her mother, as well as many others, received at her father’s hands. But if she did not mourn Henry with tears, he was still her parent and she did feel his loss, which was, as she put it four months later, ‘very ripe in mine own remembrance’.

  The most immediate consequence of her father’s demise was financial security. Within a few months of Henry’s death, as grants of land were made to them, Mary and her sister, Elizabeth, became two of the wealthiest people in the country.They both had an income of £3,000 a year (just under £1 million today), the promise of a dowry of £10,000 (£3 million) when they married and extensive holdings of property. Mary was the owner of 32 houses and manors in the east and south-east of England and one in Cheshire. A number of these, in East Anglia, were previously lands held by the Howards, but the attainder of the duke of Norfolk and execution of his son, the earl of Surrey, in the weeks just before Henry VIII’s death, allowed them to be handed over to Mary. It is somewhat ironic
that she was able, so many years later, to profit at the expense of a family that had never really wished her well, but the outcome was that Mary effectively owned most of Norfolk, Suffolk and considerable lands in Essex.This part of England was to become greatly significant in her life, for with the lands came men as well as money, giving Mary something that she had consistently lacked before - an affinity, as supporters with local ties were known. So many acquisitions inevitably required professional management, the ‘sage officers and ministers for ordering thereof’ that Henry had required his councillors to appoint for his daughters in his will. After a gap of nearly 15 years, Mary could once again expect to head a household that befitted her status, for she was, as she had been at the start of 1533, the heiress to the throne of England, and second person in the realm.

  The changes in her situation did not come about all at once and were, in part, the result of other developments affecting people close to her. For several months, until about the middle of April 1547, Mary remained in the household of the widowed Queen Katherine. There is no evidence that she attended either her father’s funeral or her brother’s coronation on 20 February. During this period of mourning, Mary had the opportunity for quiet reflection. She was able to observe the behaviour of the men who were appointed by Henry VIII to govern for his son, and learn, to her growing discomfort, the direction in which their policies might lead. She already knew many of them, of course, for although she had never participated in the government of the country, she had a great deal of experience of the vortex that was English politics, a fact that has been overlooked by historians who have cast her in the role of political ingénue.While her father lived, she knew better than to pass judgement on his advisers, preferring to see herself as their client rather than their critic. Now she was not afraid to voice opinions, especially when the behaviour of Edward’s council had a direct impact on her. And she did not think much of those who ruled in her brother’s name.