Mary Tudor: The First Queen

by Linda Porter

  There is, of course, the possibility that Mary had become pregnant and miscarried. Her own mother, though many years younger, had just that experience with her first pregnancy. Through a combination of ignorance and wishful thinking, Katherine of Aragon also went some months before she accepted that the pregnancy was over.We can probably discount the lurid and malicious stories put about by the Venetians that Mary had evacuated a ‘mole’, a shapeless lump of flesh, which is a rare occurrence but can happen. Nor is it likely that she had ovarian cancer. She lived a further three years in delicate health, but was not seriously ill until the summer of 1558, when the great epidemic of influenza hit England. Some of her symptoms might be explained by a tumour of the pituitary gland, but this cannot be proved conclusively without an autopsy on her remains.The most likely explanation remains a phantom pregnancy, and that is sad enough it itself.

  Mary’s devastation was revealed in reported exchanges with Frideswide Strelly, the only one of her women who had told the queen from the outset that she did not think she was pregnant. ‘But … when the rockers and cradle and all such things were provided for the queen’s delivery,’ said one source, ‘that her time should be nigh, as it was supposed, and those parasites had had all the spoil of such things amongst them, and no such matter in the end … when the uttermost time was come, and the queen thus deluded, she sent for Strelly, her woman, again, to whom she said,“Ah, Strelly, Strelly, I see they be all flatterers, and none true to me but thou” ’.47

  So it was not just the loss of the child who had never been, but the loss of confidence in those she relied upon most. They had cost her dearly. She had known since the spring that only the prospect of fatherhood was keeping Philip in England. He was needed in the Low Countries and the whole debacle spurred his eagerness to get away. Humiliated almost as much as Mary, Philip was nonetheless nervous about how to break to her the news that he was going. ‘Let me know what line I am to take with the queen about leaving her and about religion, ’ he pleaded in a rough draft probably intended for Ruy Gomez, on 2 August. ‘I see I must say something, but God help me!’48 He did not want a terrible scene when his wife learned that her worst fears were to be realised. Not that she would be left entirely alone. Since the spring, her sister had been with her, as well.

  On 17 April 1555, Mary issued the order for Elizabeth ‘to repair nearer to us’. She was to come to Hampton Court, there to await the queen’s delivery and, presumably, to participate in the christening ceremonies that would follow. It would be apparent to all, including the princess herself, that the royal infant negated her hopes of succession. The man with whom her name was often coupled, Edward Courtenay, was allowed to leave the Tower of London ten days before Elizabeth’s summons. By the time she arrived at court, he was already in Brussels, under the watchful eye of the emperor and English secret agents. The regime did not discount the threat the pair could still pose, but believed it to be diminishing.

  Elizabeth’s confinement at Woodstock had lasted 11 months. During that time, she tried the patience of her guardian (or her jailer, as she preferred to think of Sir Henry Bedingfeld) to the utmost. Her constant, and increasing, demands, her complaints, her episodes of ill health, led to a very fractious atmosphere. Performing his duty, to the letter, if possible, mattered a great deal to Bedingfeld, and he did not understand how his conscientiousness could be used against him by a resentful, clever young woman and her devious staff.

  The problems started almost as soon as Elizabeth, accompanied by three waiting women, two grooms and a yeoman of the robes, arrived at Woodstock. Elizabeth Sands, one of the female attendants, was a known Protestant and had to be replaced. Then there was the palace itself. As Bedingfeld soon discovered, the buildings were in a state of disrepair. It was damp, draughty, had only three rooms that could actually be locked with a key and was, he feared, a fire-trap. Despite the fact that he had soldiers with him, it was scarcely a high-security prison. His concerns were increased by Elizabeth’s attitude. She took issue with him immediately on her freedom of movement, saying the council had guaranteed that she could have the use of the entire park. Bedingfeld had visions of his charge just disappearing on one of her perambulations. Then she demanded more reading material, including an English Bible, a request that seemed deliberately calculated to rouse the suspicions of the devoutly Catholic Sir Henry. But it was not just her questionable religious faith which bothered him. Unless he vetted every single page of her books, he could not be sure that messages were not passed in and out by her supporters, especially as her cofferer, the fat Welshman Thomas Parry, had established himself at the nearby Bull Inn.

  If that were not enough, Elizabeth demanded to be allowed to write to the queen. She wanted to plead her case directly. Bedingfeld duly approached the council on her behalf with this request, which was granted. But it did not help. The queen wrote from Farnham Castle, while she was awaiting Philip’s arrival, to say she had received her sister’s letters. Mary was unimpressed. She could not forget the letter found in the French messenger’s pouch at the time of Wyatt’s rebellion and still believed her sister was involved. She had, she said, used more clemency ‘than in like matters hath been accustomed, yet cannot these fair words [in Elizabeth’s justifications to Mary] so much abuse us, but we do well understand how things have been wrought’. In other words, the queen would no longer let her sister pull the wool over her eyes. Conspiracies could easily be secretly practised ‘where the plain direct proof may chance to fail … wherefore our pleasure is not [to] be hereafter any more molested with such her disguise and colourable letters’.49 Elizabeth, Mary said, needed to make her peace with God before she could expect a change of heart from the queen.

  This was a setback, and, combined with stress, the princess became very unwell. Sir Henry was even more bothered. No royal physician was available to come to Oxford and Elizabeth rejected with absolute contempt the notion of seeing local doctors.‘I am not minded’, she said, ‘to make any stranger privy to the estate of my body.’ She continued to protest her innocence and to ask to be able to see the queen in person. By mid-autumn 1554 Bedingfeld was nearly in despair, and Elizabeth still persisted in vexing him and fussing to be moved. On 19 November, she was requesting to be allowed to live nearer to London, or even to go to one of her own properties.

  This audacious demand was ignored and Elizabeth passed the winter under the leaky roof of Woodstock, in flagrant communication with the outside world, but still confined. Mary, caught up in her own private happiness with Philip, would not have been encouraged if she had known of the lines Elizabeth is supposed to have etched on a window during this time:‘Much suspected of me. Nothing proved can be, quoth Elizabeth, prisoner.’ It is not the most convincing assertion of innocence.

  Elizabeth arrived at Hampton Court between 25 and 29 April 1555. But if she expected an immediate rapprochement with Mary, she must have been disappointed. Released she might be. Restored to favour she most definitely was not.Two weeks, during which Elizabeth was ignored completely, went by, and then she grew restive and asked to see the council. When a deputation, led by Gardiner, came, she continued to refuse to admit any guilt, although it was pointed out to her that this was tantamount to accusing the queen of false imprisonment. Finally, after a further week in isolation, she was summoned late in the evening to see Mary.

  Elizabeth’s overactive imagination came into full play.Were there, she feared, assassins waiting for her in the dark garden that she must cross to go up the private stairs? But instead Sir Henry Bedingfeld himself accompanied her, leaving her at the foot of the staircase, where Susan Clarencius awaited. Not a friendly presence by any means, for Mrs Clarencius loved the queen devotedly and had probably convinced herself as well as Mary that there would shortly be a royal birth. She had no reason to be welcoming to Elizabeth, who had caused her mistress so much trouble. And this meeting was unlikely to have the satisfactory outcome of that earlier, highly charged exchange which Susan witnessed, when Mary
told Renard of her decision to marry Philip.

  It was, though, an emotional confrontation. The sisters had not seen each other since the winter’s day at the end of 1553 when Elizabeth left court under a cloud to go to Ashridge for Christmas. Now she knelt and ‘desired God to preserve her majesty, not mistrusting but that she should try herself as true a subject her majesty as ever did any; and desired her majesty even so to judge of her; and said that she could not find her to the contrary, whatsoever report otherwise had gone of her’. Mary was tetchy. If she had hoped to hear a confession of guilt, or even an apology for being associated with rebellion, none was forthcoming.‘You will not confess your offence, but stand stoutly in your truth,’ she noted. ‘I pray God it may so fall out.’ Sensing that she had gained the higher ground, Elizabeth persisted.‘If it doth not, I request neither favour nor pardon at your majesty’s hands.’ Mary realised that the younger woman would not give way. ‘You stiffly persevere in your truth,’ she repeated. ‘Belike you will not confess but that you have been wrongfully punished.’ Elizabeth would not give a straight answer: ‘I must not say so, if it please your majesty, to you.’ Mary acidly pointed out that she might well give a different account to others, but this was denied: ‘No, if it please your majesty, I have borne the burden and must bear it. I humbly beseech your majesty to have a good opinion of me, and to think me to be your true subject, not only from the beginning hitherto, but for ever, as long as life lasteth.’50

  It is an intimate account of a tortured exchange. Mary’s bluntness and Elizabeth’s laboured denials, or half-truths, sound convincing. Yet the story, with its precise dialogue, originates with John Foxe, who is not a reliable source. In his animosity to the entire Marian regime, he had good reason to want to depict Elizabeth as the injured party, scolded by a narrow-minded, suspicious older sister. Foxe also claimed that Philip had been there throughout the interview, concealed behind a hanging on the wall, and that Mary had made asides to him in Spanish. If so, it would have been his first glimpse of the difficult sister-in-law who was to cause him so much trouble in later life. Certainly, Philip never confided details of any such meeting between the Tudor sisters to Simon Renard, but the ambassador was not in his confidence. If there was a contemporary source, it was likely to have been Elizabeth herself, who had the most to gain from making it appear that she had bested her sister. Since Foxe does not say from whom he obtained the story, it is impossible to be sure of its veracity.

  In the end, Mary’s defeat, if such it was, was self-inflicted. Elizabeth must have scrutinised her sister for signs of pregnancy but she was too discreet to be drawn into the public doubt about its reality. She stayed with Mary throughout the queen’s ordeal and was still with her when Philip left for the Netherlands, on 29 August.

  At the end, he was anxious to get away. He had done all he could in England and now his duty was to Charles V, who was in the process of abdicating. Philip had played the role of considerate consort to perfection, but there never was any guarantee he would stay, even if the queen had produced a healthy son. His presence was urgently required in Brussels and his wife, though deeply unhappy, understood this. Mary came with him through London, to the evident relief of the crowds, who feared that her prolonged withdrawal from public life meant that she was dead. She wanted to go with him all the way to Dover, but he persuaded her that this would cause him too much delay.

  Philip departed by water from Greenwich, where the queen watched from a window. The Venetian ambassador reported that she retained her composure when they said their farewells, but that she had broken down when she went back into the palace:The queen really, on this occasion showed proper grief for a woman, and a woman clothed as she was with royal state and dignity.There was no external manifestation of agitation, although it was evident she was in great trouble, and she chose to accompany the king through all the chambers and halls, as far as the head of the staircase: all the way she had a struggle to command herself and prevent any exhibition inconsistent with her high position from being perceptible to so many persons. But she was much affected by the kissing of hands by the Spanish lords and especially at seeing the ladies taking leave of the king in tears, when he kissed them one by one as is customary. But when she returned to her own rooms, she lent on her elbows at a window overlooking the river, and there, thinking she was not observed, she gave scope to her grief in floods of tears. She did not stir from the spot until she had seen the king embark and depart; not till the last sight of him; he mounted on a raised and open part of the barge, so as to be better visible as long as he was in sight of the window, kept on raising his hat and making salutes with the most affectionate gestures.51

  Even if these reports were exaggerated - Mary was extremely short-sighted and probably could not see her husband on the boat clearly, if at all - the distress she felt was acute. Philip was the only person of her own rank she had been close to since Katherine Parr, and that was a relationship based on friendship and respect between women.When she became a wife, she committed herself wholeheartedly to loving her husband. As she watched him go downriver towards Gravesend and Dover, she did not know when they would meet again. Suddenly, in a series of overwhelming blows, God seemed to have withdrawn His favour from her. But her faith was not shaken. She was still queen of England, and life must go on.

  PART FIVE

  The Neglected Wife 1554-1558

  Chapter Eleven

  Mary Alone

  ‘Cranmer is burned, standing obstinately in his opinions.’

  Sir John Mason to Edward Courtenay, earl of Devon, Brussels, 29 March 1556

  Whatever her personal grief, the queen knew that matters of state always came first. She acknowledged this fully when she wrote to Charles V about her husband’s imminent departure: ‘My lord and good father, I have learned by what the king, my lord and good husband, has told me and also by the letter which you were pleased to send me that for a long time past the state of your affairs has demanded that your majesty and he should meet in order to be able to confer together and reach the appropriate decisions. However, you have been pleased to put off the moment of separating me from him until now, for which I humbly thank your majesty.’ Here was no mention of the travesty of her pregnancy, of course. Instead, she went on:‘I assure you, sire, that there is nothing in this world that I set so much store by as the king’s presence. But as I have more concern for your majesty’s welfare than for my own desires, I submit to what you regard as necessary. I firmly hope that the king’s absence will be brief, for I assure your majesty, his presence in this kingdom has done much good and is of great importance for the good governance of this country. For the rest, I am content with whatever may be your majesty’s pleasure.’1 It was a plaintive but dignified summation of her feelings.

  Delayed by high winds at Dover, Philip did not cross to Calais until 4 September. On his arrival in Brussels he spent three days in consultation with his father, as the emperor reviewed with him the situation of the Low Countries. Charles was determined to abdicate, to invest his son with these strategically vital but troublesome lands. On 25 October, in an emotional ceremony, he addressed a large gathering in the great hall of the palace in Brussels. Worn by the responsibilities of a lifetime and the illnesses that plagued his body and spirit, CharlesV was a far cry from the energetic young prince that his daughter-in-law, Mary Tudor, had met in her childhood. His had been a life constantly on the move, from one country to another, from palace to palace, frequently in the saddle, on the field of battle, long periods apart from his wife and children; he had known little rest. And now he yearned for the quiet contemplation of the religious retreat, to return to Spain, the country of his mother, Juana the Mad, who had died only six months earlier. He knew that if he did not stop now, he would swiftly follow her to the grave. ‘I have been nine times to Germany,’ he told his audience, ‘six times to Spain, and seven to Italy; I have come here to Flanders ten times, and have been four times to France in war and peace, twice to Engl
and, and twice to Africa … without mentioning other lesser journeys. I have made eight voyages in the Mediterranean and three in the seas of Spain, and soon I shall make the fourth voyage when I return there to be buried.’2 Then, overcome with weeping, he signalled Philip to kneel before him and, placing his hands on the head of his son, he invested him with the Netherlands.They would be a constant source of friction, rebellion and bloodshed for much of Philip’s long life.

  Perhaps Charles took some comfort from the knowledge that his son was also king of England. If so, that point was not reinforced by Mary’s presence.There is no indication that consideration was ever given to the possibility of her accompanying Philip to this important family event. The privy council would not have been enthusiastic about her leaving the country, even for a brief period, yet her father had travelled during his reign, for both diplomacy and war. Like her sister Elizabeth, Mary never left England, though she thought about it often enough. Her failure to produce a child, as well as the reservations of her councillors, probably explains her absence. Philip was already thinking about the future of England and the succession. The attendance of his haggard, disappointed and sterile wife would have done nothing but raise doubts in Brussels, at a time when the family needed a show of unity. She was better left by herself in England.

  And it was not just the emperor who was bidding the Netherlands farewell. After years as her brother’s lieutenant in a country she disliked, surrounded by people she detested, Mary of Hungary had been given permission to retire, as well. It was a favour that was hard won and given only with reluctance. In a letter to the emperor written in August 1555, this severe woman, who had known little love or happiness, stated with absolute clarity the demands she had faced over the years and the difficulty of being a woman ruler in 16th—century Europe. She felt that her brother had vindicated her wish to step down by his own abdication:‘If he, with all his wisdom, experience and knowledge, feels that he must lay down the burdens of state, how much more she must feel the same, given her inferiority to him in every respect and the fact that she is a woman, for which reason alone her ability, compared to a man’s, is as black compared with white!’ Even in times of peace, which had been few and far between, the complexity of governing the Low Countries was challenging. ‘A woman is never feared or respected as a man, whatever her rank.’ No doubt she felt this sincerely, but her political acumen was as good as any man’s.‘In time of war,’ she continued,‘in which these countries are more often engaged than is necessary, it is entirely impossible for a woman to govern them satisfactorily. All she can do is shoulder responsibility for mistakes committed by others and bear the odium for the crushing taxation then imposed on the people. She would have been unable to face the position at all, during this war, if the emperor had not been present.The Low Countries would have been lost, and she would have been blamed for it.’ As regent, she had managed to hold things together. But she would not stay under the new order. ‘However much she may love King Philip, the writer believes she need not stress how hard it would be for her, having served the emperor for 25 years, to start learning her ABC again now she is past 50. There is much youth about, with whose ways she is not in sympathy. Many people are corrupt, and the upright are few.’3 Her day was done. Like Charles himself, she wanted to go back to Spain, to live quietly there in the company of her sister Eleanor, the dowager queen of France. Her emotions, as she sat beside her brother that October day in Brussels, were more of relief than regret.