Mary Tudor: The First Queen Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  PART ONE - The Tudor Rose 1516-28

  Chapter One - Daughter of England, Child of Spain

  Chapter Two - The Education of a Princess

  PART TWO - The Rejected Princess 1528-47

  Chapter Three - The Queen and the Concubine

  Chapter Four - Mary Abased

  Chapter Five - The Quiet Years

  PART THREE - The Excluded Heiress 1547-53

  Chapter Six - The Defiant Sister

  Chapter Seven - Mary Triumphant

  PART FOUR - The Queen Without a King 1553-1554

  Chapter Eight - Mary’s England

  Chapter Nine - Wyatt’s Rebellion

  Chapter Ten - King Philip

  PART FIVE - The Neglected Wife 1554-1558

  Chapter Eleven - Mary Alone

  Chapter Twelve - Triumph and Disaster

  Epilogue

  Select Bibliography

  Notes

  Notes

  Index

  Mary Tudor

  LINDA PORTER

  Hachette Digital

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  Published by Hachette Digital 2010

  Copyright © 2007 by Linda Porter

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  All rights reserved

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  eISBN : 978 0 7481 2232 5

  This ebook produced by Jouve, France

  Hachette Digital

  An imprint of

  Little, Brown Book Group

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DY

  An Hachette Livre UK Company

  To the memory of my beloved parents,

  Kenneth and Kathleen Ford

  Truth, the daughter of time

  Mary’s motto as queen

  Acknowledgements

  When I first told friends and acquaintances that I was writing a new life of Mary I there was a mixed reaction. Some agreed it was high time that England’s first queen regnant was portrayed in a more positive light. Others, however, were convinced that the legend of Bloody Mary was so firmly established in popular consciousness that it would be impossible to change opinions.Yet there continues to be a growing body of cross-disciplinary research on Mary’s life and reign which is opening up new ways of looking at the neglected mid-Tudor years. At the moment this is largely restricted to the academic community but it is worthy of a much wider audience. In researching and writing the book, I am conscious of the debt owed to the scholars who have specialised in the field, particularly Professor David Loades, Professor Robert Tittler and the late Dr Jennifer Loach. I hope that my biography will be a first step in bridging the gap and that it will persuade the sceptics that a historical reputation that has stood largely unchallenged for 450 years should be reconsidered.

  Many people have provided guidance and support. I should like to thank in particular Alan Brooke, my editor at Portrait, for his consistent enthusiasm and suggestions for improvement. My agent, Andrew Lownie, has been an inspiration through a number of quiet years, when I almost gave up the idea of writing altogether. His constant encouragement is a great gift to authors. My thanks, too, go to Henry Bedingfeld for letting me see the wonderful collection of documents at Oxburgh Hall and for the hospitality that he and his wife Mary offered on a stormy November day. I am especially grateful to Jessie Childs for alerting me to what was at Oxburgh and for discussions on the Tudor period. Similarly, thanks are owed to Dr Alice Hunt of Southampton University for sharing her views on the latest direction of scholarly research. Professor Hilary Critchley at the Centre for Reproductive Medicine in the Queen’s Medical Research Institute in Edinburgh took time to provide me with an understanding of the possible causes of Mary’s health problems and I am grateful for her insights. On a lighter but no less fascinating note, Tanya Elliott advised on Mary’s wardrobe and was eloquent in her own positive views of Mary herself.The superb replica of Mary’s wedding dress is evidence of Tanya’s enthusiasm for her subject, as well as her skill as a needlewoman. I must also thank Viscount and Viscountess De L’Isle at Penshurst Place for letting me see the portrait said to be of Mary in their private collection.

  My thanks are also due to the ever-helpful staff of the London Library, the British Library, the National Archives and the Westminster Abbey Library. Last, but certainly not least, I acknowledge the debt I owe to my husband, George, who has lived longer with Mary Tudor than her own husband ever did.This book would have been impossible without him.

  A note on monetary equivalents

  Modern equivalents of 16th-century monetary values are generally avoided by scholars of the period. Rampant inflation, frequent debasement of the coinage and information on wages and prices that is, inevitably, incomplete have deterred most writers. This is not, however, very satisfactory from the perspective of the general reader, who would like some idea of what Mary’s allowance from her father and her gambling expenditure, for example, might amount to today. I have used the equivalents given on Measuringworth.com, which was founded by Professor Lawrence H. Officer of the University of Illinois at Chicago and Professor Samuel H.Williamson of the University of Miami.

  Picture credits

  1. Courtesy of Viscount and Viscountess De L’Isle.

  2. (top) National Portrait Gallery, London (bottom) Master John © National Portrait Gallery, London, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library.

  3. (top left) Holbein, Hans the Younger © Kunsthistorisches Museum,Vienna, Austria/ The Bridgeman Art Library; (top right) King Edward VI, studio of William Scrots, National Portrait Gallery, London; (bottom left) National Portrait Gallery, London; (bottom right) Holbein, Hans the Younger © Louvre, Paris, France/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library.

  4. (top) National Portrait Gallery, London; (bottom) © Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, UK/ The Bridgeman Art Library.

  5. (top left) Teerlink, Lievine ©Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, USA/ The Bridgeman Art Library; (top right) © Private Collection/ Ken Welsh/ The Bridgeman Art Library; (bottom) © Private Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library.

  6. (top) Ewoutsz, Hans © trustees of the Bedford Estate,Woburn Abbey, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library; (bottom) © Linda Porter.

  7. (top left) National Portrait Gallery, London; (top right) Moro, Giacomo Antonio © Musee du Temps, Besancon, France/ Lauros/ Giraudon/ The Bridgeman Art Library; (bottom) ‘The British Isles and Western Europe’ (ADD 5415Af. 9v-10) by Diego Homen, by permission of the British Library Board.

  8. (top) © Linda Porter; (bottom left) © Chapter of Winchester, 2007; (bottom right) ‘The burning of Cranmer’ from John Foxe, Rerum in eclesia gestarum commentarii, 1559, vol 1 p.726, by permission of the British Library, London.

  Prologue

  4 July 1553

  It is past midnight at the royal manor of Hunsdon and the rolling countryside where Essex meets Hertfordshire is hidden by the brief darkness of a midsummer’s night.Yet there is activity; quiet, unobtrusive, but deliberate. A knot of people is gathering, ready to mount the horses that have been taken with great care from the stables, so that their hoofs hardly make a sound.The party is a small one, perhaps no m
ore than four or five. In their midst is a thin woman, not beautiful but with a commanding presence, whose distinctive red hair is hidden under the hood of her cloak. Despite the warmth of the night, she prefers, indeed requires, to be hidden by her garments. She and her advisers have thought of a plausible story to cover her departure. They have put it about that her doctor himself is ill with the plague. Still, they would prefer her to be well away from Hunsdon before her absence is noted. This rural corner of eastern England is both the source of her wealth and her support but, in these unpredictable times, no one is to be entirely trusted.The fewer people, even in her own household, who know what she is contemplating, the better.

  Once astride her horse - and she has been a fine rider since early childhood - she does not immediately move. For a few seconds, she looks back over the events of her dramatic life. She has lost much and now stands to lose even more. Once she was a princess, carefully raised to be a queen. She had felt secure in the affection of both her parents and confident that she would be able, when the time came, to fulfil the role of monarch.Then her world, a tranquil place of learning and music and privilege, came crashing down. Her father could not rid himself of the desire for a son and, as his anxieties preyed on him, so did the wiles of that woman whose name she could scarcely speak:Anne Boleyn. After six years of belaboured argument and spirited opposition, her mother, Katherine of Aragon, was cast aside and she, the true heir of England, bastardised. In the ferment, her father cut his allegiance to the pope in Rome and let heresy into his kingdom. There followed three years of absolute misery, during which she had known very little but persecution, ill health and fear. It ended with her capitulation to her father’s wishes, but her conscience could never accept what her pen had signed.

  Over time, she had been rehabilitated, even restored to the succession, but her illegitimacy remained. Her father’s death left her a wealthy and independent woman. She was still denied the title of princess but she was her brother Edward’s heir, by statute law and their father’s will. But then arguments over religion began to threaten her security once more. The young king’s councillors, those men with long beards in London, dared to tell her that she could not hear mass in her own house. She defied them and, in so doing, became a figurehead for opposition. She had known the price, even considered fleeing the country to be with her Habsburg relatives, but she was, at heart, an Englishwoman. And so she stayed, not realising that her brother, too, would turn against her.

  All of this darts through her mind as she contemplates her situation. It is clear that the young king is dying and that she faces a period of great danger. The succession has been changed illegally in favour of her cousin, Jane Grey, but, in reality, to serve the ends of the duke of Northumberland. She has known him for 15 years, sensed his frustrated ambition when he lost position at the time of her father’s divorce from Anne of Cleves, and watched apprehensively as luck and cunning helped him manoeuvre his way to supreme power.They have clashed openly, in front of the privy council. She knows his true feelings. He will keep her away from the throne that is rightfully hers if he can. She accepts that her liberty - and probably her life - is forfeit if he captures her. Whatever the future holds, she must now shape it herself, with the help of her loyal servants and the people who make up her affinity.They are not the great dukes and nobles of England but men of the lesser aristocracy. Like her, they support the old religion, the one true faith in which she has lived and will die.

  So she sits and prays for guidance, to the God her mother’s family has worshipped for centuries, as England itself did only six short years ago. And then it comes to her with absolute certainty that she will prevail. All the doubts and fears evaporate in that one moment of divine conviction. This time, at last, the Lord is with her. Besides, she has always loved a wager and there could be no greater gamble than the one she is now taking. She turns, smiling in the shadows, to the gentleman beside her and nods.Then she spurs her horse to the north.

  PART ONE

  The Tudor Rose 1516-28

  Chapter One

  Daughter of England, Child of Spain

  ‘God send and give good life and long … unto the excellent Princess Mary’.

  Proclamation at Mary’s christening, 20 February 1516

  She was the child who survived.The midwinter baby born in the small hours of Monday, 18 February 1516, was bonny enough to dispel any immediate fears for her survival. After a difficult labour, Katherine of Aragon, queen consort of England, must have dared to hope that her prayers for a healthy child had, at last, been answered. Katherine did not know that news of her father’s death had arrived in London only two days earlier; it was deliberately kept from her so that she could approach her delivery calmly.

  In the seven years preceding the arrival of this daughter, Katherine had not produced the heir that either her father, Ferdinand of Aragon, or her husband expected of her. She had endured four miscarriages, one stillbirth and the death of an infant son who was not quite two months old. Seven years was a long time for England, a country so notoriously plagued by political upheaval and civil war, to be without an heir. This catalogue of failure had hit hard at the pride of HenryVIII’s Spanish wife. Her deep religious faith and the determination she inherited from her parents, Ferdinand and his formidable wife, Isabella of Castile, had taught Katherine how to endure. Nor was Henry her first husband; that had been the doomed Arthur, Prince of Wales, Henry VIII’s elder brother, who had left her a young widow in 1502. But in 1516 all the suffering of the past evaporated, at least temporarily, in the joyful realisation that she and Henry were, at last, parents.

  The king’s undoubted relief was evident. And any regrets about the baby’s sex were disguised as optimism for the future.‘We are still young,’ Henry told the Venetian ambassador, whose mingled congratulations and commiserations on the birth of a daughter evidently pricked him.1 He expressed his confidence that, with God’s will, sons would follow. But, at 31, Katherine was nearly six years older than her husband, and her gynaecological history was discouraging.What she privately thought of her chances we do not know but it was evident from the outset that she saw her daughter as England’s heir.

  Katherine and Henry were well matched intellectually. They had both received the benefits of an education by the leading humanists of Europe, at a time when learning was considered an essential part of the preparation for leadership among royal families. Both were the children of royal houses that had teetered before establishing themselves and there was a distant bond of consanguinity, going back to the marriage of John of Gaunt with Constance of Castile.They had known each other since Henry was ten and Katherine 15, when he had escorted her down the aisle at her first wedding. But, in 1516, the fact that Katherine had been his dead brother’s wife was never mentioned.

  Physically and temperamentally, however, the couple were completely different. Katherine had been a personable young woman, petite and slim. But years of pregnancies had now given her a figure that could optimistically be described as matronly. Her husband’s French rival, Francis I, ungallantly described her as old and deformed, by which he meant that she was fat. After the birth of her daughter, she grew even fatter. On state occasions, resplendent in cloth of gold or silver and weighed down by expensive stones, she certainly had all the trappings of a queen, even if she did resemble a stout jewellery chest. She had always been a pious woman and still kept Spanish priests in her household. No one minded. Londoners, in particular, loved Katherine and her devotion to religion in her daily life was greatly admired.

  That Henry no longer found her attractive is not surprising. But he respected her and she was still a force in politics, especially foreign affairs. In the first years of his reign she guided him through the turbulent waters of international diplomacy, with the dual aim of supporting Spanish interests and shaping her young husband as a serious force in Europe. She was an effective and energetic regent during the Franco-Scottish wars of 1513. Henry probably knew what he owed her,
though he may not have acknowledged it.Yet apart from a commitment to their regal responsibilities, they never had much in common. Henry’s main pastime was sport.A tall and imposing figure at this stage of his life, Henry was a prince in his prime, handsome, gallant, a king to admire and revere. Katherine adored him and would do so until the day she died. He gave every appearance (and the appearance may have been misleading) of preferring the field and the joust to government. His personal favourites were bear-like men of little brain, such as Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk, who had daringly married Henry’s sister, Mary, without royal permission. He got away with it, and they continued to wrestle and ride in the lists, to hunt and backslap and enjoy the physicality of life. And while Henry was pursuing boar and deer in southern England, Katherine visited shrines, made offerings and prayed. Religious tourism was common in the early 16th century and it was one of the queen’s major recreations. It also made her visible and popular.

  Henry was an extrovert who loved music and public display. Katherine dutifully sat beside him and looked gracious, but her mind was increasingly elsewhere. Until 1516 she had played the role of consort with great aplomb, but her body had let her down. She could conceive easily but not bear healthy children. If she thought God was displeased, she kept her fears to herself and she turned, more and more, to religion. On that winter’s day in the red-brick palace of Greenwich, it seemed that her devotions had finally been rewarded. It is easy to imagine that she felt that, at last, she had succeeded.

  The little princess was named Mary, after her aunt, the beautiful and feisty star of Henry’s court. Katherine and her sister-in-law were on very good terms and would remain so, but the queen was no doubt pleased at the choice of name for religious as well as family reasons. The child, small but pretty, already showed signs that she had inherited the red-gold hair of both her parents and the clear Tudor complexion. Few royal children can have been so longed for and so privileged. Her grandparents had been the foremost monarchs in Europe and her father was the epitome of a Renaissance prince. At the very least, she could expect to make an impressive marriage in Europe. If no son was born to Henry and Katherine, her future would be even grander. She would rule as England’s first sovereign queen.