Mary Tudor (16 page)
Whether Mary ever had any inclination to marry Philip, we do not know, but by 1546 she was thirty and her unmarried state was becoming something of an anomaly, even a scandal. In spite of what she had earlier said to Chapuys, there are signs that Mary herself was beginning to feel this. She is alleged to have said that as long as her father lived ‘she would be only the Lady Mary, and the most unhappy Lady in Christendom’.
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She seems to have been convinced that none of the numerous negotiations that had been entered into on her behalf was sincerely meant, and she may have been right. She had been brought up to regard her chastity as a very precious asset, and had been denied, or had denied herself, all the flirtations that normally accompany the process of growing up. In spite of all frustrations, however, she never showed any sign of wanting to withdraw from the world. Legitimate or not, royalty was her birthright, and that meant, at some stage, a royal marriage, so she had little option but to wait and hope.
At this stage of her life, Mary is something of an enigma. Her virtue and godliness were praised by conservatives and reformers alike, but in spite of her excellent education, and the extent to which improving works of piety and theology had been pressed upon her, we know very little about her theological opinions. In public she was the king’s obedient daughter, but in private it seems likely that, while she was strictly Catholic on such theological matters as transubstantiation and justification, she sympathised with the reformers on their desire for vernacular scripture, and she regarded religious orders with indifference. Whether she had any intellectual, as opposed to emotional, convictions we do not know. If she had they were probably rather similar to those that her cousin Reginald Pole tried unsuccessfully to defend at the Council of Trent, which met for the first time in 1545.
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The more strictly puritanical on both sides of the religious divide regarded Mary with suspicion. She loved jewellery and fine clothes, tastes that her father was happy to indulge, but which argued frivolity in their eyes. She also gambled compulsively, usually for small stakes, and accumulated debts of hundreds of pounds, not because she was especially unlucky but simply because of the frequency with which she bet. The accounts do not record her winnings, so we do not know how successful she was. She continued to enjoy music, and added playing the lute to her earlier accomplishment on the virginals, employing Philip van Wilder to improve her technique. She danced with great enthusiasm, and that offended the reformers who regarded such activities (rather ironically in her case) as encouraging ‘carnal lust’. In May 1546 one of Prince Edward’s more austere tutors encouraged the eight-year-old boy to send an admonition (in Latin, of course) to Queen Catherine, asking her to beg his dear sister Mary ‘to attend no longer to foreign dances and merriments, which do not become a most Christian Princess’.
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It is to be hoped that the queen was in a position to ignore such an unsympathetic message. More appropriate in Prince Edward’s eyes was no doubt her renewed taste for hunting, which caused Henry on one occasion to send her a present of arrows, and inspired her to walk several miles a day, which must have been beneficial both to her health and to her spirits.
As Henry’s reign drew to an end, what we know of Mary’s daily routine suggests peace and good order. She was normally resident at court, so visits are no longer recorded, but she was not at this stage regarded as a factional leader or identified with any particular cause. At the same time she had no independence, no estates to manage, no body of dependents who owed her allegiance. All her costs were paid by her father, and although her place in the succession was guaranteed by statute, nobody expected her ever to succeed. Although it was clear by 1545 at least that Henry would have no more sons, his son Edward was a flourishing, healthy youth. He had already been contracted once to marry the infant Queen of Scots, and although the Scottish Parliament had repudiated the Treaty of Greenwich that had brought this about, the Scottish marriage was still a live issue and high on the king’s agenda. Although mortality was uncertain, nobody in 1547 expected Mary to be queen.
Neither Catherine Parr nor Mary were with Henry when he died on 28 January 1547. Even Archbishop Cranmer only just arrived in time. Henry’s death had been anticipated for several days, but his personality continued to dominate those about him until speech failed him altogether a few hours before the end. So it must have been by his own wish that neither his wife nor his daughter were present – a measure, perhaps, of his reluctance to face the true situation.
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Both claimed to be very distressed when the news reached them, but they were bound to say that, and their real feelings are hard to discover. Each was freed from constraints that they were bound to have found irksome. Catherine, in spite of three virtually platonic marriages, was still young enough to bear children and was now free (after a decent interval) to marry again. Mary, whose marriage prospects were not as improved as she might have liked, was nevertheless by the terms of Henry’s will put in possession of a patrimony worth nearly £4,000 a year. For the first time she was independent: free to manage her own estates, to hire and dismiss her own servants, and to build a body of political clients if she felt inclined to do so.
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Her marriage was now controlled by her brother’s council, but in other respects she was free to manage her own life in a way that she had never been able to do before, even during her years of favour. At the age of thirty-one this was an exhilarating – and possibly daunting – prospect.
The late king’s obsequies were a long and dignified process. His body was laid out by his household servants, and lay in state in the chapel at Westminster, where he had died, until 14 February. On the 15th he was transported with great solemnity to Windsor, and there on the 16th he was laid to rest in the Garter Chapel with a magnificent requiem mass. The chief mourner, by custom, was not his heir (who was not present), but the next nearest thing to a male kinsman that Henry possessed, his nephew-in-law Henry Grey, Marquis of Dorset, the husband of his niece Frances (née Brandon). Catherine watched the interment and mass from an enclosed part of the chapel gallery, known as the Queen’s Closet, but whether Mary was with her no one noticed or recorded. It is reasonable to suppose that she was not present. The whole elaborate ceremony was curiously detached from the hectic political activity that was going on at the same time. It was organised and, in a sense, presided over by William Paulet, Lord St John, in his capacity as lord great master of the household. Although St John was also lord president of the council, he seems to have used the organisation of Henry’s funeral as a means of distancing himself from the power brokering that was going on there.
Henry’s death had not been announced at once. It was only on 31 January that a formal proclamation was made, and Parliament dissolved.
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This had enabled Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, the young king’s maternal uncle, to secure his person. There was nothing particularly sinister about this, because it has to be remembered that, in the eyes of Catholic Europe Edward was illegitimate, and Mary was the true heir. Consequently it was important to frustrate any move that she might make – or, more likely, any move that might be made on her behalf. Both the Emperor and his sister, Mary of Hungary, withheld recognition from Edward until it was clear that the English had accepted him without dissent. In the event nothing happened. Neither Mary herself nor anyone else gave the slightest hint of challenging Edward’s claim, which rested not only on statute, but also (as the statute had specified) upon the king’s last will and testament.
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Although the authenticity of the will that Sir William Paget, the late king’s principal secretary, read out on 2 February was challenged subsequently (and its authenticity is still a matter of debate) it was not disputed at the time.
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Mary’s only known reaction was to complain that Hertford had kept her waiting several days before informing her of her father’s death, although she must have understood the reason for the delay. The council immediately set about converting Henry’s rather vague, and almost certainly incomplete, arrangements for the minority government into a workable form. The king had named a body of executors and assistant executors, which corresponded roughly with his final council. These executors (but not the assistants) were then given the power to make whatever provision they thought fit for Edward’s welfare and that of the realm. They decided that executive authority required the appointment of a single person as ‘Lord Protector and Governor of the King’s Person’, and selected the Earl of Hertford. It was agreed that the lord protector would not act without the assent of his colleagues, and there was little dissent at this stage. The executors then kissed hands with the new king, and he formally assented to them converting themselves into his privy council.
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This they were bound to do, as they needed the power to govern, and their legal status as executors of a dead king was inadequate. At the same time Paget, who had worked closely with Hertford and Lisle in the last months of Henry’s life, came forward with what he claimed were the late king’s intentions for new peerage creations – intentions that had been left unfulfilled by his death.
Paget, whose testimony was supported by Sir Anthony Denny and Sir William Herbert, both gentlemen of the privy chamber who had been close to Henry, declared that in early December the king had confided to him that ‘the nobility of this realm was greatly decayed, some by attainders, some by their own misgovernance and riotous wasting, some by sickness and sundry other means’.
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There had then followed a discussion of possible promotions, a few soundings had been taken, and estimates drawn up for the additional lands that would be necessary to support the new dignities. Henry had returned to the subject just a few days before his death, and urged Paget to see the plan implemented if he should not live to do so. Although it is natural to represent this as the new elite simply helping themselves, the old king had made no secret of his intentions, and other members of the privy chamber supported parts of Paget’s statements, according to their knowledge. The upshot was that on 17 February, the day after Henry’s interment, there was a flurry of new peerage creations. The Earl of Hertford, the protector, became Duke of Somerset; William Parr, Earl of Essex, became Marquis of Northampton; John Dudley, Viscount Lisle, became Earl of Warwick; and Lord Thomas Wriothesley became Earl of Southampton. Four new barons were also created, including Sir Thomas Seymour, the protector’s brother.
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A few days later, on 20 February, Edward was solemnly crowned at Westminster, a ceremony attended by both his sisters and his stepmother. Within a few days of Henry’s death, the bulk of the new king’s princely household had been merged into the royal household proper, and Elizabeth (now thirteen) joined her sister in the entourage of Catherine Parr, the queen dowager.
This was never intended to be more than a temporary arrangement, because Elizabeth, like Mary, had been generously provided for in her father’s will and, once the proper arrangements could be made, would have her own estates to manage. For the time being, Elizabeth seems to have been quite content to stay where she was, but by April Mary was pressing for her own share of the endowment to be put in place. The reason for this was not any change in her relationship with Catherine, but rather the reappearance of Thomas Seymour, now Lord Seymour of Sudeley, the queen dowager’s old suitor and the new lord protector’s brother. Although a privy councillor, and since 17 February lord admiral, Seymour was a faintly disreputable character. Whether he was really in love with Catherine, or merely fancied the idea of laying hands on her generous settlement, is not clear; however, she was in a vulnerable state of mind, and found his attentions irresistible. They were married secretly at some time during May.
When he found out, Protector Somerset was furious. Not only did he consider his brother to have acted with indecent haste, but he also suspected there was an intention to undermine his own position. A quarrel quickly developed when Somerset demanded the return of a quantity of jewellery that he claimed had been loaned to Catherine, but which she protested, with her husband’s support, had been a gift.
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There was little else that the lord protector could do. The marriage was a
fait accompli
, and as he was soon to discover to his chagrin, Thomas had managed to wheedle the boy king into supporting his move, unknown to the council, which Thomas knew would back his brother in opposing the match.
By the end of April, Mary’s patrimony had been allocated. The formal grant was not made until 17 May 1548, but the first warrant for a payment to her from these lands is dated 12 April 1547. It looks very much as though an interim arrangement was quickly put in place to satisfy her desire to get away from Thomas Seymour, because some of the properties were not identified until June, and it was July before she took up residence in one of them.