Mary Tudor (5 page)
Authors: Linda Porter
The first of these came before Margaret Pole was part of her life. At the age of two and a half, Mary was betrothed to the dauphin of France and went through a form of marriage ceremony at Greenwich with her future husband’s proxy, the French admiral, Bonnivet. Wearing cloth of gold and a bejewelled black velvet cap, she behaved impeccably during a long ceremony in which the bishop of Durham preached about marriage for the edification of the adults present. Henry may have been serious at the time but the power games of mainland Europe made it improbable that his daughter would ever be delivered to France. She was not expected until the dauphin was 14 and could consummate the marriage. As shrewd a participant in the ebb and flow of diplomacy as Henry VIII would at least have suspected that the path ahead was not straight. But, for the time being, it looked like a glorious match, even if Katherine of Aragon privately preferred one of her own relatives as a husband for Mary.
The first sign that all was not well with this Anglo-French union came when Mary failed to accompany her parents to the Field of Cloth of Gold in 1520. The meeting had been postponed from 1519, when Mary was expected to attend, but when it finally took place, she was not there. Her absence may have been regretted by Francis I’s plain but intelligent wife, Queen Claude. As Mary’s prospective mother-in-law she had already sent a jewelled cross worth six thousand ducats and a portrait of her son, the dauphin, but she was not rewarded with a sight of his child bride. There could have been any number of reasons for this, of course. There was tension between Queen Katherine and Cardinal Wolsey, a deterioration of what was often a difficult relationship. Perhaps Katherine did not want her daughter, still so young, caught up in this, or maybe she and Henry felt that a camp, no matter how luxurious, was not the right place for their child to be introduced to her in-laws and the devious world of diplomacy.We shall never know whether Henry would have shown off a son, if there had been one. As it was, Mary was spared any awkwardness and Henry did not have to face any potentially difficult questions about the succession.
The king of France, however, was not to be so easily deterred. Before Henry had even returned to England, Francis sent three of his gentlemen to see the princess. No doubt he wanted to make sure that she was in good health and did not have some physical or mental defect that had been concealed. Their coming was unexpected and their reception demonstrates how much importance was attached to the occasion and how the political and social establishment rallied round the princess. ‘Notwithstanding the short warning’, they were banqueted by the mayor of London, shown the major sights of the capital and entertained by the duke of Norfolk.
The countess of Salisbury would have explained to Mary who the gentlemen were and what was expected of her during their visit, perhaps even rehearsing the princess in what to do and say. Mary handled the situation with great aplomb for one so young, surrounded as she was by all the great and the good of England who were not accompanying her father to France. ‘There were with her divers lords spiritual and temporal; and, in the Presence chamber, besides the lady governess ... the duchess of Norfolk, her three daughters’ and several other titled ladies. The princess was a credit to herself, her parents and the probably anxious Margaret Pole. Her behaviour and demeanour were completely appropriate to the occasion. She entertained her visitors graciously on 2 July at Richmond, ‘with the most goodly countenance, proper communication and pleasant pastime in playing at the virginals’.
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The French deputation left suitably impressed by their royal hostess, after further generous hospitality: ‘goodly cheer was made unto them . . . strawberries, wafers, wine and ypocras [a kind of cordial] in plenty’.Yet by the time the year 1520 was out Henry, concerned by the implications of French aggression against Katherine’s nephew, the emperor Charles V, was already considering a new match for Mary. The prospective bridegroom was Charles himself.
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The French deputation left suitably impressed by their royal hostess, after further generous hospitality: ‘goodly cheer was made unto them . . . strawberries, wafers, wine and ypocras [a kind of cordial] in plenty’.Yet by the time the year 1520 was out Henry, concerned by the implications of French aggression against Katherine’s nephew, the emperor Charles V, was already considering a new match for Mary. The prospective bridegroom was Charles himself.
Charles was 16 years older than Mary and would have to wait another six years before she could reside with him, and perhaps two beyond that before they could cohabit as man and wife. Still, it was a wonderful opportunity for the English princess. Her marriage prospects had become even grander, and no one remarked on the irony of her first suitor having been a toddler and her second a man old enough to be her father. Royal marriages had nothing to do with sentiment and only rarely with suitability.The negotiations, the hammering out of carefully considered clauses, the tactical advantages, however brief, that might accrue to the parties, these were the aspects that mattered.They certainly exercised the minds of Henry and Wolsey on the English side and Charles and his advisers across the Channel. But it was not just Henry’s underlying doubts about relations with France which made him think about other options for his daughter. In his instructions for the treaty negotiations, Henry pointed out: ‘it is to be considered that she [Mary] is now our sole heir; and may succeed to the crown’.
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This made his daughter a very valuable bargaining tool:‘We ought to receive from the emperor as large a sum as we should give with her if she were not our heir.’ It also shows that Henry did not baulk at an alliance that would surely have major dynastic implications for England if Mary did become queen in her own right. It was never suggested that Mary should marry an Englishman. She was only six years old but she already knew that her destiny was to marry a foreign prince.
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This made his daughter a very valuable bargaining tool:‘We ought to receive from the emperor as large a sum as we should give with her if she were not our heir.’ It also shows that Henry did not baulk at an alliance that would surely have major dynastic implications for England if Mary did become queen in her own right. It was never suggested that Mary should marry an Englishman. She was only six years old but she already knew that her destiny was to marry a foreign prince.
Despite the age gap, Charles was not necessarily an unsuitable husband for Mary. After all, he was family. He was her first cousin and papal dispensation was necessary for marriages with such close relations, but that was no more than a minor bureaucratic hurdle. It was precisely because Charles was her nephew that Katherine of Aragon, quietly triumphant at the disappearance of the French match, wanted him also as her son-in-law.
Charles was a tall, lanky, rather serious young man, not at all prepossessing physically. He was no storybook prince in this respect. If Mary expected him to rival her father in appearance, she must have been very disappointed. The emperor’s prominent chin was the precursor of the famous Habsburg jaw that came to disfigure his descendants by the end of the 18th century. His father and mother had brought together Spain and the Low Countries, a union that was to prove as unhappy as their own marriage. When Charles’s father, the inveterate womaniser Philip of Burgundy, died young, he left the Spanish wife he had never loved a disconsolate widow. She lived on for another 30 years but never wanted to govern. They called her Juana la Loca (Juana the Mad), but her main problem seems to have been chronic depression. In 1519 Charles’s grandfather, Maximilian I, died and the young prince inherited Austria and Germany, as well as the ancient title of Holy Roman Emperor. It was a heavy mantle to bear. The problems that came with these vast territories, so soon to be the prey of social and religious unrest, were innumerable and, ultimately, insoluble. Charles’s life was already dedicated to ceaseless hard work and the merry-go-round of diplomacy and war. Henry VIII’s task as king of part of a small island must have seemed easy in comparison.
In 1522, as any dutiful fiancé should, Charles came to visit England. The treaty of Bruges, in which he and Mary were affianced and Henry promised him support in his continental struggles, had been signed the year before. Charles may have wanted to reinforce Henry’s commitment by putting in a personal appearance. Perhaps he was at least curious to see his young cousin, though neither he nor Henry privately thought that there was much likelihood of her ever becoming his wife.We do not know how Mary felt.The idea of marriage can mean little to a six-year-old, especially one brought up an atmosphere as rarefied as Mary experienced. She would have associated her parents’ marriage with being at court for great occasions, with the reverence they received and the power they evidently enjoyed. But since she had known only privilege herself, this may all have seemed perfectly natural. No doubt the importance of what was being arranged for her would have been explained in general terms and emphasis laid on the way she was to behave when she met the emperor. It has been suggested that Katherine may have put romantic ideas into her head about Charles and fed childish fantasies about the thrilling prospects of the imperial bridegroom who awaited her. But who knows what Mary’s fantasies were? The pony and goshawk she was given about the same time may well have been more attractive preoccupations. Katherine was not an excitable woman by nature and though she would have wished - expected, indeed - for Mary to behave with all the aplomb that a carefully prepared little princess could muster, reminding her daughter of her dignity and underlining her importance are not the same as encouraging the child to think she was in love.
The visit was a great success at the time and both Mary and Charles played their parts perfectly. He had already had favourable reports on Mary’s musical and dancing skills from his ambassador, who was invited to inspect the prospective bride’s abilities in these courtly pursuits. On this occasion, Mary played the spinet and performed a French dance, the galliard.
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Perhaps when Charles arrived she wore some of the jewellery that had been specially made for her, an impressive brooch with the name
Charles
on it, or another with
The Emperour
picked out in lettering. We do not know whether she danced in person for her cousin, but it seems probable that her parents would not have missed the opportunity for Mary to impress.
14
Perhaps when Charles arrived she wore some of the jewellery that had been specially made for her, an impressive brooch with the name
Charles
on it, or another with
The Emperour
picked out in lettering. We do not know whether she danced in person for her cousin, but it seems probable that her parents would not have missed the opportunity for Mary to impress.
Although she was never to see him again, Charles stayed in Mary’s mind. He was a charming and gracious guest and his visit was one of the great state occasions of the early 16th century. On his arrival by boat at Greenwich Palace on 2 June 1522, he was greeted by Queen Katherine and her ladies and, of course, the Princess Mary. All her life she remembered his kindness to her, which seems to have been natural and not in any way forced. What else does a six-year-old princess expect in a husband? Admiration for the way she carries out the set-pieces expected of a great lady? Compliments leading to evident parental approval of her deportment? Later, she would see him as a father-figure, a constant in times of unpredictable and unwelcome change, beset by danger. They had met when she believed her future was to be his bride, and both her parents talked of her as the heir to the throne. It was a happy time.
England took to Charles as well. He was the first - and, as it turned out, last - Holy Roman Emperor ever to visit and Londoners, who always loved a spectacle, warmed to him when he entered their city with Henry, accompanied by great pageantry and rejoicing. The emperor himself reported that he was ‘met with a magnificent reception from a great company of knights and gentlemen, with solemn and costly pageants, to the great joy of all the people’. Records of the preparations made for two days of jousting, on 4 and 5 June 1522, are further evidence of Tudor England’s impressive ability to entertain lavishly. For the decorative backdrop to the jousts, 46 yards of cloth of gold of damask, 11 yards of cloth of silver and 26 yards of russet velvet were ordered. One William Mortimer was hired to embroider the russet velvet with ‘knights on horseback, riding upon mountains of gold, with broken spears in their hands and ladies coming out of clouds, casting darts at the knights …’.
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Charles was equally well received as he toured southern England on a month-long hunting trip. When he left on 6 July, Mary’s thoughts may have turned to making the trip across the North Sea to Brussels herself in years to come, as Europe’s empress and England’s queen. But it was not to be. Both Charles and Henry knew the harsh realities of diplomacy; the benefits of the treaty of Bruges were tangible but temporary. Charles needed a bride nearer his own age and readily available. A man with his responsibilities could not wait for years and years, no matter how sweet his little cousin was. So he married the handsome Isabella of Portugal, and she soon produced the male heir that his aunt had so conspicuously failed to provide for England. There would be plenty of other suitors for Mary’s hand.
15
Charles was equally well received as he toured southern England on a month-long hunting trip. When he left on 6 July, Mary’s thoughts may have turned to making the trip across the North Sea to Brussels herself in years to come, as Europe’s empress and England’s queen. But it was not to be. Both Charles and Henry knew the harsh realities of diplomacy; the benefits of the treaty of Bruges were tangible but temporary. Charles needed a bride nearer his own age and readily available. A man with his responsibilities could not wait for years and years, no matter how sweet his little cousin was. So he married the handsome Isabella of Portugal, and she soon produced the male heir that his aunt had so conspicuously failed to provide for England. There would be plenty of other suitors for Mary’s hand.
Perhaps she was disappointed. Or perhaps she never viewed it as anything other than a play in which she was the leading actress for a while. During this period of raised expectations Mary was without Margaret Pole, temporarily removed as lady governess because her daughter’s father-in-law, the duke of Buckingham, had crossed Wolsey and been accused of conspiring against Henry. He was executed and Margaret, through association, found herself, not for the first time, mistrusted.
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The affair, the first in Henry’s reign when he moved against a great subject, blew over without permanent damage to Margaret. By 1525 she was back in charge of Mary’s daily life and ready to support her in the next phase of her preparation for queenship. Henry, with an eye to the future, thought it was time that his daughter got some practical experience of government. He had decided to send her off to the Welsh Marches, where generations of princes of Wales had gone before her to play their part in the royal family and to finish their education. If Mary’s childhood was not yet over, it was definitely entering a different and more serious phase.
16
The affair, the first in Henry’s reign when he moved against a great subject, blew over without permanent damage to Margaret. By 1525 she was back in charge of Mary’s daily life and ready to support her in the next phase of her preparation for queenship. Henry, with an eye to the future, thought it was time that his daughter got some practical experience of government. He had decided to send her off to the Welsh Marches, where generations of princes of Wales had gone before her to play their part in the royal family and to finish their education. If Mary’s childhood was not yet over, it was definitely entering a different and more serious phase.
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