Mary Rose

by David Loades

  Mary was the better educated of the two, and may well have been the more intelligent. While the Duke maintained a pro-French stand in the Council, when he bothered to attend, his wife was a channel for French cultural influences. She dressed in the French fashion, and patronised French artists and scholars, notably ‘Master Ambrose’, who was a painter in the service of Cardinal Duprat. Ambrose produced some of the finest work ever seen in England, and that probably stimulated the King to patronise Lucas Horenbout and Hans Holbein, not wishing to be outshone by his sister’s protégé. 43 The gardens at Suffolk Place in Southwark and at Westhorpe were laid out in the French fashion under Mary’s influence and the houses were among the best decorated of any in England. Such a style was not always popular, and it should be remembered that it was for their ‘French touches’ that the King’s minions were disciplined in 1519, a move which used to be attributed to Wolsey, but is now thought to have been the work of the whole Council. 44 There were certainly many councillors, including the Duke of Norfolk, who were opposed to Wolsey’s pacific policy with regard to France, and who welcomed the King’s decision to ally with the Emperor which was negotiated in August 1521. The Cardinal was entrusted with the negotiation, not because he sympathised with the intention but simply because he was by far the most experienced international diplomat that England possessed, and because he would always do the King’s bidding once that had been made clear to him. One of the features of this agreement was that Charles agreed to marry the King’s five-year-old daughter, who was thus transferred from the Dauphin to the Emperor. In view of the age difference between them, it is unlikely that Charles took this commitment very seriously, although Henry did (or pretended to). 45 The idea of the Treaty of Bruges was the Emperor’s, but Henry accepted it and Wolsey had no option. At first its true purpose was disguised under a screen of mediation, but this was abandoned when Charles paid another visit to England in May 1522. Again there were lavish entertainments and banquets, and when he reached London on 6 June, he was received by the King and it was noted that places of honour were reserved for the Duke of Suffolk and Marquis of Brandenburg, both of whom were the husbands of Queen Dowagers. Mary played her usual part in the courtly entertainments which accompanied the visit, and her namesake the princess danced, although Charles’s entourage does not seem to have included any women on this occasion. The Emperor stayed for just over a month, and by the time that he left Henry had committed himself to war with France, a commitment which was to be fulfilled in the following year because it was already too late for a campaign of sufficient scale to be prepared during that season. 46 Wolsey, who had maintained the peace against the King’s intermittent bellicosity for eight years, had at last been overpowered by the logic of events, and the Duke of Suffolk found himself committed to a leading military role against his old friends. Mary faced the suspension of her dower payments, and must have been profoundly relieved by the let-out clause in her agreement with the King, because there was no way in which she could have maintained her repayments in the absence of her principal source of revenue. It would be difficult enough to manage her regular expenditure, and further indebtedness loomed.

  It was June 1523 before Henry was sufficiently convinced by the Duke of Bourbon’s threatened rebellion against Francis I to commit an army to the field, and the end of July before a fresh treaty was signed between the King, the Emperor and the Duke for a joint attack. 47 Despite his poverty and the lateness of the season, it was therefore the end of August when Henry launched 10,000 men, commanded by the Duke of Suffolk from Calais, into Normandy. At first the strategy was to capture Boulogne, but by the middle of September Wolsey had changed his mind, and began to urge upon the King a direct attack on Paris. This was because Bourbon had convinced him of the feasibility of a co-ordinated assault, involving himself, Suffolk and the Emperor, which would settle the issue at a single blow, rather than the ‘dribbling war’ which had hitherto been envisaged. 48 Eventually Wolsey convinced Henry, and on 26 September the siege of Boulogne was called off, and Suffolk was ordered to lead his men direct to Paris. At first all went well, and they advanced 75 miles in three weeks, encountering only light resistance. The King was enthusiastic, and started to organise reinforcements to keep the campaign going through the winter. Margaret of Austria was pleased because her southern borders were protected while she annexed Friesland. And then things started to go wrong. A Spanish force had indeed crossed the Pyrenees, but were so demoralised that the French had no difficulty in containing them. The Imperial thrust from the east did not materialise at all, and Bourbon’s rebellion collapsed in a matter of days. 49 As a result Paris was strengthened against any possible attack, and Suffolk was isolated and exposed. Margaret was unable to provide either money or the horsemen which had been promised, and the Burgundian forces under van Buren, upon whom the Duke had been heavily dependent for strategic advice, began to melt away. Suffolk was left with no option but to retreat, and a spell of freezing cold weather in November completed his misery. With his men dying of disease and frostbite, his disciplinary system, which up until then had functioned well, broke down, and it was a disorganised rabble that arrived back at the Channel ports in early December. 50 Henry was mortified by this news, and would not at first accept it, until confirmatory detail persuaded him of its truth. Suffolk had done his best in impossible circumstances, and in the wake of Margaret’s failure to support him had declined to place garrisons in her border fortresses to protect her against French reprisals. Until the November frosts ruined his control, he had been a wise and responsible commander, and the King did not blame him for the failure. Generous rewards would not have been appropriate, but the Duke emerged from his French adventure with his reputation for loyalty and generalship undiminished, and his martial enthusiasm undimmed. 51

  This last was important, because Charles V and Margaret were keen for Henry to try again, and looked to Brandon to lead any such attack. However, English councils were divided, and neither the Emperor nor his niece had the money to pay for such a expedition. Henry wavered. Early in 1524 he was bellicose, talking of leading an army to France in person, and of enforcing his claim to the French throne, but by the spring as the financial realities began to become apparent, his ardour cooled. By the summer Wolsey was conducting secret peace negotiations with emissaries of Louise of Savoy, and welcoming overtures from Clement VII. He must have done this with Henry’s knowledge, but by the late summer the King was blowing hot again. In August he was planning another army of 9,000 foot and 1,500 horse, which Suffolk was to command, and the Duke set about making preparations. 52 He chose councillors and captains, and discussed arrangements for supplies and the recruitment of mercenaries. All this came to nothing, again because the money was simply not available, and there are signs that the Duke and Duchess of Suffolk were moving in different directions. Desperate to recover her dower revenues, she was supporting the peace initiative, and there were rumours of lavish gifts to induce her to intervene with her brother. If she did so, her intercessions were of no lasting effect. The Duke, on the other hand, was an Imperial pensioner, and his payments were up to date, so he had less to lose by continuing the war, and more to gain by shadowing the King as he changed his mind. His appearances at the Council in 1524 and 1525 were erratic, but on the whole his interests lay in continuing the conflict, and that was what his continental friends in the Imperial camp expected. 53 At the beginning of 1525 Henry had virtually given up; then came the news of the Battle of Pavia. On 14 February Francis’s army had been destroyed, and the King himself captured. His kingdom now appeared to be open to attack as never before, and Henry’s enthusiasm for forceful intervention was immediately revived. ‘Now is the time,’ he said to an embassy from the Low Countries, ‘for the Emperor and myself to devise the means of getting full satisfaction from France. Not an hour is to be lost.’ 54 The Great Enterprise was to be revived. Unfortunately, Charles was unmoved. He had his own agenda for exploiting his victory, and replied that if
Henry wanted a piece of France, he was welcome to conquer it for himself. This, it soon transpired, was beyond the King’s means. Wolsey had succeeded in getting a very grudging subsidy out of Parliament in 1523, but that was nowhere near enough to cover the costs of a large military expedition, and an attempt at a new exaction, called the Amicable Grant, in 1525 failed completely. 55 Disappointed by the Emperor’s response, and frustrated of his purpose by lack of means, the King veered round again and accepted Wolsey’s proposal to resurrect the peace negotiations of the previous year. In the present circumstances, any such initiative was bound to be welcomed by Louise of Savoy, acting as regent during her son’s captivity. John Joachim, her envoy of the previous year, returned to London in June, and on 30 August a solemn treaty was signed at the More, Wolsey’s residence in Hertfordshire. 56 The Cardinal’s policy at this juncture was complicated, but seems to have been aimed at restoring a balance of power between France and the Empire, which meant putting together an anti-Imperial alliance. The papacy and several Italian states were involved in this plan, which eventually took shape in the form of the League of Cognac in 1526. This involved taking advantage of Henry’s disillusionment with the Emperor, and hopefully restoring him to the kind of mediating position which he had enjoyed in 1518. Such a bait was necessary because by the terms of the Treaty of the More, France had ceded no territory to England, and that had been one of Henry’s declared war aims. The King’s honour required significant concessions, and Louise agreed to restore his pension, originally conceded by Louis XII in 1514, together with the payment of Mary’s dower. On 22 October Lorenzo Orio, a Venetian envoy in London, reported that his colleague Giovanni Giaochino had gone to Calais to fetch the 50,000 ducats which were due on the pension, together with 10,000 ‘for Madame Mary, the King’s sister, Queen Dowager of France’, to whom also were restored her dower lands. The latter were farmed to Giovanni, in an arrangement which had still to be confirmed, for 29,000 ducats a year. If this worked, and there is good reason to suppose that it did, this would have given Mary an income of almost £10,000 a year. 57 Even with the necessary deductions, this would have made her one of the wealthiest peers in England, significantly richer than her husband, whose debt repayments she was now in a position to assist. It is not surprising that Suffolk, for all his military ambitions, should have been an enthusiastic supporter of the Treaty of the More.

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  THE DUCHESS & HER CHILDREN

  Despite the rumours of her pregnancy, and the fears of the Duke in that respect, it was 11 March 1516 before Mary gave birth to her first child. 1 This suggests conception in June or July of 1515, well after their final marriage, and given the passion of their early relationship, indicates that she may have had some contraceptive knowledge, which no well-brought-up young lady was supposed to possess. The birth put her in good company, because her sister Margaret, the Dowager Queen of Scots and now the wife of Archibald, Earl of Angus, although estranged from her husband and a fugitive in England, had been delivered at Harbottle Castle in Northumberland on 8 October 1515; and Queen Catherine, after years of stillbirths and cot deaths, had at last produced a healthy infant on 16 February. 2 Mary had the advantage, however, because whereas both Margaret and Catherine had borne daughters, the Duchess of Suffolk had borne a son, who, given the fact that Henry had no male heir, might one day stand in the succession to the throne. The birth took place, not at Suffolk Place, but in a house belonging to Cardinal Wolsey just outside Temple Bar, called Bath Place, which suggests that labour may have come upon her unexpectedly. She and the Duke were understandably elated. Mary had now justified her existence in the most traditional fashion, and he was able for the time being to forget the mounting burden of debt which would one day have to be faced.

  The child was christened Henry, after the King, and the fact that he was pleased to accept that indicated another stage in the reconciliation between brother and sister. The ceremony was performed by John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, assisted by Thomas Ruthall of Durham, and the King and Cardinal Wolsey stood as godfathers. Catherine, the Dowager Countess of Devon, and a daughter of Edward IV, was godmother, completing the royal credentials of this most welcome addition to the family. 3 The christening took place in the hall at Suffolk Place, with all the splendour of a state occasion, and the Duke was immensely gratified by this unmistakable sign of his rehabilitation. The font was specially warmed for the occasion, and torches lit up the wall hangings with their motif of red and white Tudor roses. The only absentee from this splendid occasion was Mary herself, who had not yet been churched and who sat in the nursery to receive her baby and his presents, together with the congratulations which were appropriate. When the ceremony was over, the procession moved from the hall to the nursery along a specially fenced and gravelled path, with various members of the Suffolk household carrying the basin, chrisom and other impedimenta. Lady Anne Grey, suitably attended, bore the infant himself, and Sir Humphrey Banaster, Mary’s vice-chamberlain, his train. Spices and wine were then served by the Duke of Norfolk and other attendant peers, and the sponsor’s gifts were presented. The King gave a salt cellar and a cup of solid gold, and Lady Catherine two silver gilt pots, which were none the less welcome for not being of the slightest interest to the young prince, who presumably slept soundly through this part of the proceedings. 4

  The Duke could ill afford the expense of a London season, but Mary had her own resources, and in any case he could hardly deny her the pleasure of a reunion with her sister, who was due to visit the court at the end of April. They had not met since 1503, when they had both been children, and their meeting was expected to be the cause of much celebration. In fact they might have had difficulty in recognising each other, because although Mary was still exceptionally beautiful, thirteen years and several pregnancies had coarsened Margaret, who had never matched her sister for looks, and now retained little of her youth beyond her passionate nature. She was vain, and inconsiderate of others, with a fierce temper – more like her brother, in fact. Her vanity took the form of an extraordinary fondness for fine apparel, and Henry was told that the dresses which he had sent as a present to Northumberland after the birth of her daughter had done her health more good than all the medical attention which she had received. 5 Altogether she had collected more than forty fine gowns for her visit to the court, which she was eagerly anticipating. Margaret travelled south in easy stages during April 1516, spending Ascension (1 May) with the Duke and Duchess of Norfolk at Enfield, and reaching the capital the following day. Henry rode out as far as Tottenham to meet her and escorted her to the temporary lodgings which had been provided at Baynard’s Castle. Her reception began with a state dinner, hosted by William Warham at Lambeth, and was followed by a succession of entertainments provided by the King either at Westminster or Greenwich. 6 Both Mary and Catherine were pleased to see her, and they had thirteen years of gossip to catch up on, to say nothing of their babies which must have formed a basis of common interest. Given her estrangement from her husband, and the complex political situation in Scotland, neither the King nor Wolsey expected Margaret’s present marriage to survive, and no sooner had she arrived in London than the latter was hinting that she might be available on the international marriage market. He even went so far as to suggest to the Imperial ambassador the possibility of a match with the Emperor Maximilian, who conveniently happened to be a widower. 7 The Queen Mother of Scotland was not consulted about these proposals, which remained just that. She was concerned to gain her brother’s support to re-establish her position in Scotland, and would not have been interested in any alternative partner. Wolsey’s suggestion was in fact more to do with his desire to secure control of the Council than with any destiny for the Queen of Scots. He was concerned at this stage to balance England’s relations with the Emperor against those with France, and was concentrating on persuading the King of the wisdom of this course. He therefore did not want men with strong views, like the Duke of Suffolk, confusing the issue in Council
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