Mary Tudor: The First Queen

by Linda Porter

  Henry’s will, which Mary never saw, named 16 executors to act as privy councillors and 12 assistants, who were probably intended to form a further pool of advisers without having to be privy councillors themselves. It was carefully devised to prevent the abuse of power and to negate, as far as was possible, the inevitable instability of faction. The council had absolute authority and was supposed to be ‘hermetically sealed’.2 The only way out of it was death, and there was no way in. As such, it was a clever solution to the very real problems posed by the character of Tudor political life and the requirement to have an effective executive until EdwardVI could assume power himself, a reality that was nearly a decade away.

  Much has been written on whether the will was altered in the days just before Henry’s death but, even if it was, this does not really matter. Henry could not impose himself from the grave and everyone knew that power would reside with Edward Seymour, earl of Hertford, the king’s maternal uncle. Just how much power, however, remained to be seen. Aided by the capable William Paget, the dead king’s secretary, and his ally, John Dudley, Hertford kept the king’s death (and the will, which he had in his possession) secret for three days after Henry died. Mary was only one of the majority who were not informed until after Seymour had told Edward and brought the young king to London. On 1 February, the executors rejected de facto the terms of the will by appointing Hertford Lord Protector of the realm and governor of the king’s person. In so doing, they made him the most powerful subject that there had ever been in Tudor England. A little more than two weeks later they added to his prestige by giving him the title of duke of Somerset. He was to rule England, with increasing disregard for the kind of collective government envisioned by Henry VIII, for two and a half turbulent years.

  Van der Delft’s observations on the new power structure were shrewd and prophetic. He believed that power would effectively be executed by four men: the Protector himself, Thomas Wriothesley (who had shed tears when, as Lord Chancellor, he announced the old king’s death to the House of Lords), John Dudley and William Paget. A career diplomat and politician who served Henry and each of Henry’s children in turn, Paget was highly rated by the imperialists:‘It is … most desirable that we should keep Paget in hand, for his authority in this country is great,’ was the opinion of the ambassador. But he also noted that Somerset and Dudley were likely to fall out, principally because Dudley was ‘of high courage’ and not likely to submit for long to Somerset. He was also known for his ‘liberality and splendour’, presumably an indication that he was aiming for something more than a place alongside Somerset and the others on the council. The Protector,Van der Delft said, was a ‘dry, sour, opinionated man’.3

  Mary seems, however, to have had a soft spot for the duke of Somerset and his wife, even though their religious beliefs and practices soon began to diverge alarmingly from her own. She had known the duchess for some years, when she was a lady-in-waiting to Katherine Parr, and appears to have been one of the few people who actually liked this controversial woman. ‘My good gossip Nan’, she called her, and she seems to have anticipated that their friendship would continue, writing to ask for favours for one of her servants in the spring of 1547. No one else seems to have looked so kindly on Anne Somerset, who was depicted as a scheming, overbearing harridan. Paget, in discussion with Van der Delft, would later sum up the troubles of the duke in the memorably pithy phrase:‘He has a bad wife.’That was, indeed, a contemporary comment, though it may say as much about views of strong women in a male-dominated world as it does about the lady herself. Certainly, she was not popular, but Mary never forsook her. After her husband’s final fall from grace, in 1551, the duchess remained in the Tower of London as a prisoner until released by Mary when she became queen. And Mary, for all her reservations about the quality of Edward’s council, apparently preferred Somerset to the regime that replaced him. Perhaps it was the family connection to Jane Seymour, the queen who had spoken on her behalf in the terrible summer of 1536, which explains what seems otherwise to have been a surprising generosity of spirit towards the man who caused her much unhappiness over religion.

  One of the many areas of contention outside the council (which speedily relieved Wriothesley of his role in March 1547) was a dispute within the Protector’s own family.This nearly drew in Mary as well, and was the reason that she left the dowager queen’s household towards the end of April. Within weeks of becoming a widow, Katherine Parr had renewed her liaison with Thomas Seymour, the Protector’s younger brother. Disappointed that he did not have as great a role in the running of the country as Somerset, Seymour decided that a dowager queen was a prize worth winning. It is quite possible that he did genuinely love her. Katherine had narrowly survived four years of marriage to Henry VIII, and she now allowed her heart to overrule her head.The possibility that she might be happy for herself, since she had no further political role, turned the earnest religious commentator into the reckless lover of a high-profile rogue. So began an affair that was hard to conceal. The precise date of Katherine Parr’s marriage to Thomas Seymour is unknown as the ceremony was conducted in great secrecy, probably around the middle of May.The queen took her sister into her confidence but not Mary, though the circumstantial evidence, including the timing of Mary’s departure from Katherine’s household, suggests that her stepdaughter was uncomfortable with her behaviour.

  Katherine’s new marriage may have been solemnised by God, but it was not sanctioned by king and council. Admittedly, there was nothing in Henry’s will to say that the queen could not marry again, but it was clearly impolitic to have done so very quickly, and without the king’s formal consent. Edward was very fond of his stepmother and the errant couple realised that they needed to get his support and preferably that of other members of his family as well. So they embarked on a letter-writing campaign, hoping to win hearts and minds for a proposed match that they knew only too well was already a fait accompli. One of the people that Seymour approached to press his supposed suit with the queen was Mary.

  Dismayed by what she had observed while still with Katherine and apparently smarting at the insult, however unintentional, to her father’s memory, Mary firmly declined to become involved. She began her letter politely enough, by thanking Thomas Seymour for his role in obtaining various payments for her, but went on to say:I have received your letter, wherein, as me thinketh, I perceive strange news, concerning a suit you have in hand to the Queen for marriage, for the sooner obtaining whereof, you seem to think that my letters might do you pleasure. My lord, in this case I trust your wisdom doth consider that if it were for my nearest kinsman and dearest friend …, of all other creatures in the world, it standeth least with my poor honour to be a meddler in this matter, considering whose wife her grace was of late, and besides that if she be minded to grant your suit, my letters shall do you but small pleasure. On the other side, if the remembrance of the King’s Majesty my father (whose soul God pardon) will not suffer her to grant your suit, I am nothing able to persuade her to forget the loss of him … Wherefore I shall most earnestly require you (the premisses considered) to think none unkindness in me, though I refuse to be a meddler in any ways in this matter, assuring you that (wooing matters set apart, wherein I being a maid am nothing cunning) if otherwise it shall lie in my little power to do you pleasure, I shall be as glad to do it as you to require it, both for his blood’s sake that you be of, and also for the gentleness which I have always found in you … Your assured friend to my power, Marye.4

  The letter, in Mary’s strong, clear hand, is both clever and revealing. It contains an implied reproof, to Seymour and to Katherine, and the strong suggestion that the princess knew very well what had been going on under her nose, even if she did claim to be ‘nothing cunning’ about ‘wooing matters’. Mary’s other-worldliness has been overstated in the past. She knew Seymour’s reputation with women and was not fooled by his appeal to her innocence. Later she claimed that she had met him only once, but this letter sugges
ts otherwise.5 What she did have was the measure of him, and considerably more so than her half-sister, whose reputation was nearly ruined by her later association with Katherine Parr’s fourth husband. A letter attributed to Elizabeth at this time, by the unreliably inventive 17th-century Italian historian Gregorio Leti, refers to correspondence between the sisters that may or may not have taken place. In it, Elizabeth expresses very pompously ‘how much affliction I suffered when I was first informed of this marriage’ and of the necessity to ‘use much tact in manoeuvring with her [Katherine], for fear of appearing ungrateful’, but her disdain, if genuine, was not sufficient to keep her out of the queen’s household, with all the problems that ensued.6 What was true, even if the words put into Elizabeth’s mouth by Leti are a fiction, was the observation that neither she nor Mary could offer any obstacle to the marriage. And neither, as it turned out, could the Protector and his formidable wife. But they did not take kindly to finding that the queen was now their sister-in-law, and ill feeling between the Seymour brothers was intensified by the quarrel over jewels and precedence that broke out between their wives.

  Mary was glad to be apart from these squabbles, as an independent woman, setting up her own household with trusted servants. For much of Edward’s reign she lived at either New Hall or Hunsdon in Essex, though in the autumn of 1547 she went to East Anglia to inspect her lands and was an occasional visitor thereafter.The officers of her household were well chosen, unswervingly loyal and willing to give Mary, upon occasion, unwelcome advice. Chief of these men was Robert Rochester, who became the controller of her household. He was, according to a contemporary, ‘a man of few equals in steadfastness, loyalty and wise counsel’. All these attributes would be put to the test in his service of Mary during her brother’s reign. By 1549, Rochester had been joined by Sir Francis Englefield, who does not seem to have had a specific role, but who was clearly viewed as having significant influence on Mary, and by Edward Waldegrave, who was Rochester’s own nephew.

  These men had much in common.They were all religious conservatives from eastern England and all were devoted to their mistress, not just personally, but dynastically. Waldegrave also had family ties. His wife, born Frances Neville, was the daughter of Sir Edward Neville, executed with the Courtenays and the Poles in 1538. When her husband took up his office with Mary, Frances became one of her ladies, so underlining her family’s long and often dangerous tradition of service to the princess.

  Rochester and his colleagues were willing to suffer imprisonment and hardship for her sake, not just so that she was able to follow her religion, but because they wished to ensure her place in the succession. Collectively, they checked Mary’s tendency to make the dramatic gesture; she might subsequently say that she was willing to embrace martyrdom rather than give up the mass, but her officers were determined that she should live to claim her throne, when the opportunity arose. They also acted as a vital counterweight to imperial influence, reminding Mary that she was Henry VIII’s daughter more than she was Charles V’s cousin, and that her future lay in England. Fortified by their support and convictions, Mary faced the future with more confidence.

  But in one important respect, Katherine Parr’s final marriage left a gap in Mary’s life. It deprived her of the company of a woman whom she regarded as an equal. Now there was no one to fulfil that role. Margaret Douglas, much more inclined to enjoy the court than Mary and aware of the importance of being seen, came down to London from Yorkshire with her young son, Lord Darnley. Much as she wanted the boy to meet Edward VI and for his role in the English succession to be recognised, she did not stay long.The countess of Lennox shared Mary’s devotion to the old religion and felt uncomfortable among the reformers of Edward’s regime. She soon retired to her husband’s northern estate at Temple Newsam. This left Mary with only her ladies-in-waiting to provide female company.They were loyal and affectionate but they were subordinates, not friends. Her sister might, in other circumstances, have become her confidante. Instead, they grew apart and a tension developed between them that was never resolved.

  Though there were many factors that influenced the development of the sisters’ relationship, including the inescapable one of geographical separation, the greatest and most fundamental can be simply stated. Elizabeth was no longer a child, but a person of substance with a mind of her own. Potentially, she was a rival. At 13 years of age she was a highly intelligent young woman who had benefited from a superb education, part of it shared with her brother, and informed by a greater breadth of learning and enquiry than Mary’s. Mary’s education was certainly impressive by the standards of its day, but those standards had changed by the time Elizabeth entered the schoolroom. She was taught by men who had questioned established orthodoxies, and the power of new ideas inclined her away from her older sister intellectually. Mary had been proud of Elizabeth’s precociousness while she was growing up (as indeed she was of Edward’s) but what was attractive in a child was suddenly less so in a woman. Elizabeth shared Mary’s emotional fragility, as did all the Tudors except the founder of the dynasty, Henry VII, but, over time, she learned to use it to better effect. Never having known her mother, she was not encumbered by the sense of loss and resentment that inevitably coloured Mary’s adult life. Her past, her origins, was unspoken, and she lived very much in the present, pampered by her adoring household staff and her foolish but loving governess, Katherine Ashley.

  When Mary left Katherine Parr’s household, Elizabeth stayed, unwisely, as it turned out. Henry VIII’s last queen died a few days after giving birth to a daughter (named Mary, after the princess) in September 1548, by which time her younger stepdaughter had already moved out, apparently under a cloud.The whisperings about the real reason for her departure became clear in early 1549, when, suddenly, lurid details surfaced about Thomas Seymour’s behaviour towards Elizabeth while she was under his roof; they were part of the evidence gathered against him which resulted in an accusation of treason. He was never brought to trial but attainted and executed in March 1549, without his brother lifting a finger to save him. Chastened by the knowledge that she had escaped real danger mostly because of her ability to live on her wits, Elizabeth now realised only too well the perils she and Mary faced at the hands of the unscrupulous power-seekers of Edward’s reign.

  But the Seymour episode did not bring the sisters closer together - if anything, it pulled them further apart. Elizabeth emerged with a dubious reputation, while Mary’s was unsullied. Mary kept her own counsel about what had gone on, but at the back of her mind was probably the question that increasingly haunted her as Elizabeth grew towards maturity - what was to be expected, seeing that she was Anne Boleyn’s daughter? That thought was more than sufficient to threaten the basis of their relationship and to cancel much of the affection that Mary had once felt.

  A chilliness was developing between the sisters, who saw little of each other during the six years that Edward was king.They exchanged letters but were seldom at court together, and there is no record of either having entertained the other at any of the many houses they both owned.They soon came to represent different strands of the political and religious fabric of their brother’s kingdom, and it was Mary’s relations with the young king, rather than Elizabeth, which mattered more. To Edward’s increasing frustration and Mary’s near-heartbreak, they were at odds for most of his reign.

  Edward was only nine years old when his father died and had spent much of his short life trying to impress the rather distant figure of his parent, for whom he probably felt as much fear as affection.Yet though often depicted as a cold, even heartless child, he seems to have loved both his sisters. Elizabeth was close to him in age and had shared his lessons and his household. Mary, though, was old enough to be his mother, and she always treated him with respect but as if he were a child. This gave her a convenient excuse for disagreeing with the edicts of his ministers, when, as became more frequently the case, they did not suit her. Edward hated the confrontations with Mary, an
d on one occasion they both ended up in tears, but he found her tone patronising and was increasingly impatient with it as he grew into his teens. This creeping disenchantment with a difficult woman whom he could not help loving when he was a little boy may explain his attitude towards her when he knew he was dying in 1553.

  But six years earlier, there was no reason to suppose that he would never attain his majority. He was a healthy, active child with a good mind and a determination to be a good king, to govern his people with the God-given powers that Archbishop Cranmer had so radically described at his coronation. Perhaps his academic attainments at so young an age were overstated.The imperial ambassador was dismissive of the paragon’s linguistic abilities when introduced to him. He began to greet the king in French, but Somerset told him to address the king in Latin,‘which he said he understood better than French, but, truth to tell,’ added Van der Delft, unkindly, ‘he seemed to me to understand one just as little as the other, although the archbishop of Canterbury had assured me that the king knew Latin as well as he [the archbishop] did himself ’.7 It does not seem to have occurred to Van der Delft (who admittedly was disenchanted with the entire state entry from the Tower into London) that a small boy meeting all manner of dignitaries for the first time in public might be momentarily tongue-tied, or just plain bored.

  Edward survived the arduous ceremonies of the coronation and the subsequent feasting with a becoming dignity. He did not see much of Mary in the first year of his reign; she went off to Norfolk in mid-July to inspect her estates there and did not return till September. She was expected in London in early November but she was still in Essex at the beginning of the next month, suffering from ill health. The physicians called it melancholy and it seems to have afflicted her, by her own admission, every year at about this same time.When Van der Delft went to see her she told him she did not expect to return to London that winter. But the reasons for her depression (perhaps a form of what would nowadays be known as seasonal affective disorder) may have been intensified by the changes in religious practice that were increasing in England. Mass was no longer being celebrated in the house of the Protector, his brother or John Dudley, now earl of Warwick. But Mary was devoted to the mass, a ceremony central to her daily life. She already knew she would never give it up, even if it meant public opposition to the laws being made in her brother’s name.