Notorious Royal Marriages: A Juicy Journey through Nine Centuries of Dynasty, Destiny, and Desire

by Leslie Carroll

  Responding to Louis’s chivalrous mood, Mary blew him a kiss. The king returned the gesture and, still on horseback, “boldly threw his arms around her neck, and kissed her as kindly as if he had been five-and-twenty,” wrote the Bishop of Asti, the French ambassador to Venice.

  Mary and Louis’s royal wedding—the third ceremony, but the first at which the bride and the groom were both present—took place in Abbeville, France, at nine a.m. on October 9, the feast day of St. Denis, the patron saint of France. Cardinal René de Prie, Bishop of Bayeux, officiated. The procession was led by pairs of knights, heralds, macers, and musicians, followed by the English lords and ladies. Mary wore a gown of gold brocade cut in the flattering French style. She was weighted down with jewelry, more as a show of wealth and worth than an effort to elegantly accessorize. Accentuated by her jeweled coronet, her abundant copper tresses cascaded down her back.

  Louis’s cloth of gold wedding ensemble cost 116 crowns per yard; the fabric had been imported from Italy and the entire outfit, trimmed in sable, was said to be worth about £400 (about $272,000 today).

  At the state dinner, Mary presided over the ladies’ table in her own chamber. A formal ball followed later in the evening, “the whole court banqueting, dancing, and making good cheer.” Louis was so enamored of his bride that he refused to quit her side. At eight p.m., Mary’s new daughter-in-law, Claude, conveyed her to the bridal bed, which had already been prepared and blessed.

  It was time to beget that son he’d been wanting. Hope sprang eternal in Louis’s soul. The following morning the king was giddy as a lark, sporting a goofy expression of satiation and announcing that “he had performed marvels.” An unidentified Italian noted that “thrice did he cross the river last night and would have done more had he chosen.”

  But François d’Angoulême—so close to the throne he could taste it—told his mother, the formidable Louise of Savoy, “I am certain, unless I have been greatly deceived, that it is impossible for the King and Queen to have children.”

  Still, others gave the impression that Mary might not have been as concerned about that little issue, even though it was her duty to bear an heir. “The queen does not mind that the king is a gouty old man . . . and she herself a young and beautiful damsel . . . so great is her satisfaction at being Queen of France,” wrote Marino Sanuto in his Diarii, Volume XIX.

  But in fact, the union had gotten off to a rocky start.

  Mary’s vast retinue of English attendants was a huge drain on Louis’s Exchequer. And on October 12, just three days after her wedding, Mary fired off a letter of complaint to her brother, informing him that “on the morn after my marriage my chamberlain and all other men servants were discharged,” as was “my mother Guildford [her former governess] with my other women and maidens except such as never had experience or knowledge how to advertise or give me counsel in any time of need, which is to be feared more shortly than your Grace thought at the time of my departing.” Louis had suffered a severe attack of gout after their wedding night and Mary was convinced that he was already at death’s door and she would be left bereft in a foreign land with only a handful of inexperienced teens to aid her. As things transpired, the young queen’s timeline was not far off the mark.

  But Louis remained adamant regarding the dismissal of Mary’s English train. According to Henry VIII’s Lord Chamberlain, the 1st Earl of Worcester, “. . . he said he is a sickly body and not at all times that [he would] be merry with his wife to have any strange [foreign] woman there, but one that he is well acquainted with [and before whom he] durst be merry.” Worcester reported to Wolsey, “he swore there was never man better loved his wife than he did, but rather than have such a woman about her he had liefer be without her.” It certainly would have been disastrous if the king was willing to forswear his wife’s company because her old governess was hovering about like a shadow. So Guildford had to go.

  Apart from this “bedchamber crisis,” the royal couple enjoyed a cordial relationship. They spent many pleasant hours alone, Louis reclining on a couch while Mary entertained him by accompanying herself on the lute. He was a generous husband and a genteel companion. Although she would have preferred a different spouse (and she’d get there within the space of half a year), Mary told Henry, “How lovingly the King my husband dealeth with me,” urging her brother to thank the ambassadors who had negotiated her marriage. Whatever she thought after dark, she did relish being queen of the most glamorous and cultivated court in Europe.

  By custom an uncrowned Queen of France could not enter Paris, so Mary Rose Tudor, clad in gold and diamonds, was crowned at St. Denis on Sunday, November 5, 1514. To celebrate his wife’s coronation, Louis hosted a five-day grand tournament, which included three days of competition between the English delegation, led by Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, and the French team, captained by François d’Angoulême.

  After the joust, Suffolk remained in France to fulfill an unspecified diplomatic obligation on Henry’s behalf; his mission was such a secret that it was not referred to in any dispatch, for fear of interception. Mary’s only role in these talks was to keep her husband receptive to Henry’s overtures, which she evidently did with tact and grace, and the council accepted her presence. What none of them knew was that she’d long harbored a tendre for Brandon.

  In December, Louis became gravely ill. The contemporary historian Robert de la Marck, Seigneur de Fleuranges, was convinced that a dotard’s folly to please his nubile wife was the cause of his rapid decline, writing that

  The King . . . desired to be a pleasing companion with his wife; but he deceived himself, as he was not the man for it . . . inasmuch as he had for a long time been very sick, particularly with gout, and for five or six years he had thought that he would die of it . . . and he lived on a very strict diet which he broke when he was with his wife; and the doctors told him that if he continued he would die from his pleasure.

  It’s a view that historical novelists find too delicious to resist. And it was certainly true that Louis had been keeping late hours since his marriage to Mary, trying to act young and virile by overexerting himself in hunting, riding, and dancing. The Parisians believed their king had been tricked by the “young filly” Henry sent him. But the Earl of Worcester thought the king, though ailing, had never seemed happier. “My lord, I assure you, he hath a marvellous mind to content and please the queen,” he wrote to Wolsey.

  Mary sat by her husband’s bedside every day, fending off sexual innuendo from Louis’s son-in-law, François d’Angoulême, who was counting the minutes until he sat on the throne. She had a delicate path to negotiate. Although she had no intentions of entering François’s bed, she couldn’t afford to alienate or offend him, because she would be at his disposition when Louis died.

  On December 28, 1514, Louis wrote to Henry, telling him that the queen “had hitherto conducted herself, and still does every day, towards me, in such manner that I cannot but be delighted with her, and love and honor her more and more each day; and you may be assured that I do, and ever shall, so treat her, as to give both you and her perfect satisfaction.”

  It was the last letter that Louis XII would ever write. Four days later, on New Year’s Day 1515, he died. Mary, his wife of only eighty-two days, fainted at the news. But we can mourn Louis with a hint of gladness. Whatever killed him, he died happy and in love. His funeral was held at Notre Dame and he was laid to rest beside Anne of Brittany in St. Denis.

  Louis’s son-in-law, the twenty-year-old François d’Angoulême, now François I, was so eager to wear the crown that he shortened the official mourning period. But Mary, now Queen Dowager, got no reprieve from the ritual ascribed to widowed French queens. Clad head to toe in the white gauze mourning gown known as a deuil blanc, Mary was confined to an airless chamber in the Hôtel de Cluny for forty days. The walls were draped in black, and no light was permitted to penetrate. There, in the suffocating gloom, Mary was deliberately kept apart from society to ascertain whether
she was pregnant—as well as to keep her from seducing another man in the hopes of fobbing off his child as Louis’s heir. If Mary were carrying her late husband’s child, it would take precedence over François because it would be a direct heir of the old king’s body. And everyone would have to wait until the baby was born to know whether it (if a male) would be the next king, or (if it was a girl) whether François would inherit the throne after all. Therefore, any question of Mary’s possible pregnancy had to be settled before his coronation.

  The court chronicler Pierre de Brantôme, who clearly thought very little of Mary, wrote that she had been having such a grand time being Queen of France that she faked a pregnancy by wrapping towels around her waist and fainting in public; but that François’s mother, Louise of Savoy, allegedly exposed the charade by demanding that Mary be examined by a physician. Although Mary briefly thought she might be pregnant, no other chronicler or person close to her has mentioned this ruse, and her behavior as Queen Dowager was invariably reported as dignified and discreet.

  By February 10, Henry VIII was informed that “there is no truth to the rumor that the French Queen, that now is, is with child.” He had dispatched a trio of ministers to sound out François’s intentions toward maintaining his predecessor’s strong relations with England. Although he was the least experienced diplomat of the three, the senior ranking member of the delegation was Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk, earning that distinction because of his lofty title, in addition to his status as Henry’s best friend and sports buddy. The men were also charged with inventorying Mary’s valuables and escorting her safely back to England.

  Mary was acutely aware that she was a political football, utterly at the mercy of the two kings. François was already scouting for future husbands on her behalf. If she refused his selections, she’d be stuck in France, a fate she hoped to avoid at all costs. Ignoring the fact that he was already married, the French monarch had also been flirting with her himself, urging her not to tell her brother or the ambassadors about it. But one day he began to change his tune, assuring Mary that he “would neither do her wrong, nor suffer her to take wrong of any other person.”

  François had noticed the undeniable spark between Mary and the Duke of Suffolk. And when she confessed that she had always “been of good mind” toward Brandon, the French king decided to become their advocate. Playing Cupid, he assured Mary he would put in a good word with Henry on their behalf. He was hardly being altruistic; it was good for France if Mary married one of her own, since another foreign marriage might tip the balance of world power in England’s favor.

  No sooner had Suffolk arrived in France than François accused him of crossing the Channel with the express purpose of wedding the dowager queen. The duke immediately denied it, assuring François, “I trust your grace would not reckon so great folly in me to come unto a strange realm to marry the Queen of the realm without your knowledge and without authority from my Master, and that I have not nor was it ever intended on my Master’s part nor on mine.”

  So, during the first week in February 1515, Suffolk reported to Henry the details of this delicate conversation with François and made a clean breast of things to Wolsey as well. Henry praised Suffolk’s handling of the matter and even granted him a passel of lands as a reward. Wolsey informed Suffolk of the “King’s continued friendship in the accomplishment of the said marriage,” adding that “his Grace marvelously rejoiced to hear of your good speed in the same, and how substantially and discreetly ye ordered and handled yourself in your words and communication with the said French king, when he first secretly broke with you of the said marriage.” Wolsey also urged the duke to make sure that François kept his promise to write to Henry in support of the marriage.

  Now, all of this sounds like everything was rosy. But Henry and Wolsey were not men to be taken at face value. For his advocacy of the marriage to Mary, Wolsey wanted a quid pro quo from Suffolk—the duke’s intercession with Henry in garnering him the plum appointment as Bishop of Tournai, a lucrative sinecure on the Continent.

  And it was important for Henry to get Mary back to England so that François didn’t score a diplomatic coup by uniting her to a husband who would benefit France. Henry may have figured that his sanctioning of Mary’s marriage to Suffolk would cut François out of the picture, and then, once the couple was back on English soil, he could have the betrothal annulled and bestow his sister’s hand on a husband of his choosing.

  But Mary reminded her brother that “whereas for the good of peace and for the furtherance of your affairs, ye moved me to marry . . . King Louis of France . . . though I understood that he was very aged and sickly . . . and for the furtherance of your causes I was contented . . . so that if I should . . . survive the said late king I might with good will marry myself at my liberty without your displeasure. . . . Upon . . . your faithful promise, I assented to the said marriage; else I would never have [agreed to it] . . . , as at the same time I showed unto you more at large”—presumably her attraction to Suffolk.

  She added a postscript advising Henry that if he refused to honor his promise, then François would surely broker another marriage for her. Several European princes, including the Holy Roman Emperor, had already made their pitch. “I would rather be out of the world than it should so happen,” she stated dramatically.

  And she assured her brother that she had been the instigator in her relationship with Suffolk. “Now that God hath called my late husband to his mercy and . . . I am at liberty, dearest brother, remembering the great virtues which I have seen . . . in my Lord of Suffolk, to whom I have always been of good mind, as ye well know, I have affixed and clearly determined to marry with him; and the same, I assure you, hath proceeded only of mine own mind, without any request . . . of my said Lord of Suffolk.”

  When Suffolk arrived in France in early February 1515, Mary was still enduring her mourning quarantine and was lonely and homesick. Desperate and distressed, she poured out her heart to him. Reporting to Henry, Suffolk broke the news as gently as he could manage, opening his letter with the highlights of his mission, his conversations with the French king, and his success at recovering Mary’s valuables on behalf of the English crown. Then he tiptoed into the treacherous territory of his marriage to Mary, informing Henry that at their first private meeting a few weeks earlier, Mary had confessed her love for him and her determination not to wed anyone but him. Terrified that she’d be fobbed off on a husband from the Netherlands or France, the queen told Suffolk “that she would rather be torn to pieces” than never see England again. “Sir, I never saw woman so weep,” the duke assured his sovereign.

  However, Mary suspected Suffolk of being party to a plot to lure her home so that Henry could immediately ship her overseas again into the arms of another unwanted groom. There was only one way he could prove otherwise, the duke explained to Henry VIII in a letter. “She swore she would never have me nor never come to England” if he did not wed her at once—before they were due to sail.

  Shortly afterward, Mary and Suffolk were secretly wed by an unknown priest in the Cluny Chapel in Paris. A few of Mary’s servants stood as witnesses.

  As canny as he was, Henry had not anticipated that the lovers would actually marry in France, presenting him with a fait accompli that would be awkward and embarrassing to undo.

  Mary knew she’d taken a rash and potentially dangerous step. But she also knew her brother and counted on his love for her to win his forgiveness—after the requisite displays of the famous Tudor temper. She also reckoned on Wolsey’s advocacy because he needed Suffolk’s support in the Privy Council.

  So who was this man for whom Mary had risked so much?

  The Brandon family had an illustrious relationship with the Tudors. Charles’s father, Sir William Brandon, had been Henry’s father’s standard-bearer, and had paid the ultimate price for his service to the crown when he was killed by Richard III during the Battle of Bosworth Field.

  Charles Brandon, who was s
aid to resemble Henry so much that some people thought he was the king’s “bastard brother,” was one of Henry’s favorite courtiers. He owed his rapid rise in society to his unique status as Henry’s childhood companion. They were cohorts as well as competitors; no two youths were as skilled at jousting, single combat, tennis, riding, dancing, and the other physical activities they enjoyed. Six or seven years Henry’s senior, Brandon was bold, enterprising, and ruthlessly ambitious. “A liberal and magnificent lord,” wrote a Venetian visitor to the English court. “No one ever bore so vast a rise with so easy a dignity.”

  Charles Brandon was also a ladies’ man. Sometime before 1505, he had made a verbal commitment known as a de praesenti marriage (not much more than a handfasting), with a young woman named Anne Browne, who bore him a daughter. He then repudiated the marriage in order to marry Anne’s older, wealthy aunt, Margaret Mortimer. Tiring of Margaret, he appealed to Rome for an annulment of their marriage on the grounds of consanguinity, then wed Anne Browne again in a formal ceremony, and they had a second daughter.

  But Anne left him a widower in 1512. That December, Brandon purchased the wardship of eight-year-old Elizabeth Grey, the daughter of Sir John Grey, Viscount Lisle, with the intention of wedding her when she came of age in four years; and it was for this reason that in 1513 Henry had created his pal Viscount Lisle, acknowledging little Elizabeth as his wife in the letters patent granting the title. Henry made Brandon a Knight of the Garter and Master of the Horse, and the new viscount distinguished himself in battle during the king’s campaigns in France that summer.