Mary Tudor: The First Queen

by Linda Porter

  The French summit was a great success in public relations terms and, finally confident that they would soon be man and wife, Henry and Anne evidently slept together, if not for the first time, then certainly after an abstinence of many years. By January 1533 Anne was pregnant. She and Henry were secretly married by Cranmer at the end of the month. On 23 May 1533, Cranmer pronounced the king’s marriage to Katherine null and void on his own authority and on Whitsunday, 1 June,Anne was crowned queen at Westminster Abbey, after several days of carefully orchestrated magnificence. But the splendid entry to London, the pageants, the feasting and display, do not seem to have caught the imagination of a populace who had loved Katherine of Aragon and who were more curious than demonstrative. Only the oldest of London’s citizens remembered the entry of a pretty Spanish princess as a royal bride more than 30 years ago, but most Londoners were not entranced by the new queen. Perhaps they were thinking of the woman she had dethroned and pondering its impact on the princess Mary, who took no part in proceedings.

  Mary learned of her father’s marriage at the end of April, about the same time that the king publicly acknowledged Anne as his ‘most dear and well-beloved wife’.The imperial ambassador reported that the news was communicated to her at the same time that she was told of the king’s commandment forbidding all further contact with her mother. Mary was naturally very distressed,‘although the princess has since begged and entreated him to appoint someone next to her person to give evidence that her messages to her mother are only in reference to her health, and proposing that her own letters and the queen’s may previously pass through the king’s hands, her prayers have been completely disregarded’. The ambassador went on to add: “This prohibition [I hear] was read to the princess the very same day that the king caused his new marriage to be announced to her.’ It would have been so very easy to be provoked, but Mary steadied herself. She probably also knew of Anne’s pregnancy, by then more than obvious, but this was not a reason to panic or overreact. Anne’s triumph could be short-lived. She might not survive labour (at 31 she was comparatively old by Tudor standards to be facing her first delivery); she could have a stillbirth or a child that did not survive its early weeks, as had so tragically happened to Mary’s mother. So the princess held herself in check: ‘… she was at first thoughtful and then, as the very wise person that she is, dissembled as much as she could and seemed even to rejoice at it.Without alluding in the least to the said marriage, and without communicating with any living soul, after her dinner the princess set about writing a letter to her father … on its being shown to the king … he was marvellously content and pleased, praising above all things the wisdom and prudence of the princess, his daughter. ’16

  The letter has not survived, which is a pity. It must have cost some effort to write. Henry, meanwhile, was only too happy on the basis of this piece of filial obedience and good sense to let things lie.The girl was not going to present any of the problems her mother had plagued him with for so long. She could be afforded a little time and space before the birth of her half-sibling.When that happened, he would have no choice but to make a decision on her status.

  Chapter Four

  Mary Abased

  ‘I think you are the most obstinate woman that ever was.’

  Thomas Cromwell to Mary, June 1536

  The first half of the year 1533 promised a false reassurance of normality for Princess Mary. At the customary exchange of gifts that characterised the New Year, rather than Christmas, in Tudor England, her father gave her a gilt cup and a ‘gilt cruse with a cover’. These may not seem very imaginative presents. Mary, as befitted her status, already possessed an impressive collection of such items, going back to her early childhood. Similar valuable pieces of plate were part of Mary’s tangible wealth. They were not household items but symbols of privilege, their value indicating the power and riches of the donor and the favoured position of the recipient. Carefully entered into the accounts of the princess’s household by her financial controller, Henry VIII’s largesse provided glittering evidence of who Mary was. It seemed as if nothing had changed.

  At the end of May, Mary spent several weeks at the archbishop of Canterbury’s palace at Otford in Kent. She seems to have liked it there and had also visited the previous autumn, when she was joined by her cousin, Frances Brandon. But that summer, Frances’s mother was dying and there was no question of the cousins sharing each other’s company. When the duchess of Suffolk died in June 1533, Mary and her own mother lost a staunch friend. The king had not forgiven the little sister on whom he once doted for her very public disapproval of Anne Boleyn, and the two of them were never really reconciled. Mary Tudor died away from court, on her estate in East Anglia, but her daughter Frances remained close to Mary throughout an eventful life which saw her own daughter usurp Mary’s throne.

  Despite this family bereavement and the uncertainties about her own future, Mary’s time in Kent passed pleasantly enough. She had sufficient leisure to occupy herself with problems faced by members of her household and to ask favours on their behalf. Still styling herself ‘Marye Princess’, she wrote to Thomas Cromwell, Henry’s chief minister, requesting his understanding if the 80-year-old father of one of her servants did not come to London in person to receive the knighthood he had recently been awarded.1 Mary was a concerned and considerate mistress to her servants and their families throughout her life, a trait that she must have inherited from her mother, since her father never showed the slightest sense of loyalty to those around him. Her life unruffled, or so it seemed, the young princess was happy to be able to use her influence for the benefit of others.

  Having handled her father’s new marriage with sense and diplomacy, perhaps Mary allowed herself to believe that her own situation was still secure. The court remained at Greenwich, where Anne Boleyn was finding the last months of pregnancy difficult, and Henry did not go on his normal summer progress. Mary had good information on what was happening from the marchioness of Exeter and from the imperial ambassador. She could do nothing but wait. But there were ominous signs of what was to come.

  In mid-July, Lord Hussey, her chamberlain, was required by Cromwell to obtain Mary’s jewels. Placed in a most uncomfortable position between the demands of the king and the determination of his daughter not to give up a key element of what made her a princess, Hussey squirmed with embarrassment. He was anxious that Cromwell should know of his attempts to carry out the royal command, but he met with a wall of obstruction from Mary and the countess of Salisbury. First, they stalled, saying that no inventory of Mary’s jewels could be found; then the princess announced that she would not hand anything over unless she saw the king’s letter expressly ordering this. Hussey struggled for more than a month. Naturally, there was exactly the same lack of cooperation when he tried to obtain the princess’s plate, being dismissed by the countess with the curt observation that the plate ‘cannot conveniently be spared’, as if this was a begging neighbour asking for a loan of crockery, not a king demanding return of his possessions. No wonder Hussey vented some of his exasperation on Cromwell: ‘Would to God that the king and you did know what I have had to do here of late.’2 Mary was an intelligent, stubborn girl, and her passion for finery, which must already have been developed by the age of 17, was an essential part of her character. She loved her jewels for their beauty as well as the rank they conferred, and she would not give them up meekly. She was also proud and born to command, not to be ordered about by her chamberlain.The rational part of her already knew what was happening, and she had passed the first test, her father’s remarriage, with considerable maturity. But the emotional strain was beginning to tell. Her mental and physical well-being could not be separated. Everything now depended on the child Anne Boleyn was carrying. For Mary, this would be a far greater challenge to her composure than the humiliation of her mother, heartbreaking though that had been.

  Katherine was naturally concerned for her daughter’s welfare. Although she had not seen her
for two years she knew from Mary’s letters how the princess was faring and she had a further, much-appreciated source of information and support in Charles V’s ambassador, Eustace Chapuys. In dangerous and fast-changing times, Chapuys was Katherine’s link with the outside world, the visible face of her nephew at the English court. He was also to become a mentor to Mary and, although it is an exaggeration to say he was a father-figure to the princess, since the differences in their social rank would have made that an unrealistic description of their relationship, still he was a very important constant in some of the most difficult years of her life.

  Chapuys replaced Inigo de Mendoza as imperial ambassador in the summer of 1529. Mendoza was a Spaniard, the bishop of Burgos, and an old-style diplomat who combined representation of his country abroad with religious office. This was not at all uncommon at the time, and a number of French and English diplomats held religious posts as well.The alternative source of income was an attraction, given that ambassadors were seldom well paid and had to find ready money for their own expenses and networks of informers. But Mendoza, who complained of constant ill health, was viewed as too hot-tempered and tactless to handle the increasing complications of the situation in England. He was, in fact, the last Spaniard to represent Charles in London for the rest of the emperor’s reign. Henceforward, imperial diplomats came from other parts of the emperor’s domains, either the Low Countries or eastern parts of modern France. They were civil servants rather than church grandees and were often accomplished professionals. Mary would work with four different imperial ambassadors during her life, but none of them played a more crucial role in her development than Eustace Chapuys.

  Katherine had specifically requested Chapuys as Mendoza’s replacement because of his legal expertise and prowess in Latin. She believed he could help her over the divorce but, in the end, it was her daughter to whom he rendered the greater service. He was a Savoyard, born in Annecy, around 1490. One year before Mary’s birth, he left the University of Turin with a doctorate, and began to establish himself in the government service that was to be his life. In 1517, the bishop of Geneva put him in a key post in the diocese, dealing with the Swiss cantons, where Latin was the official language. On an intellectual as well as a linguistic level he was also highly regarded, being perfectly in tune with the humanist ideas of his day. Chapuys corresponded with Erasmus and counted Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim, a leading European figure, as one of his closest friends.

  His professional life was varied. He progressed through the service of the duke of Savoy and the constable of Bourbon until, in 1527, he entered the employment of Charles V. Two years later he was given the difficult and by no means attractive posting to England. There he remained for 16 years, a faithful servant of his master and a committed opponent of the French, whom he hated because of their designs on his homeland, though he spoke and wrote French fluently. He is also one of the most detailed sources of information that we have on Mary’s life at this period.The impact of the divorce and subsequent sweeping changes in religion in England come alive in his fluid if sometimes rambling dispatches. Charles V did not always agree with him and Chapuys’ interpretations of what was happening were not always correct, but he was a shrewd observer of men. Though he thoroughly disapproved of the king’s treatment of Mary, as well as the chaos into which he had plunged England, he personally found Henry VIII courteous and affable. To say he liked him might be an exaggeration, but there was definitely respect.

  Of course, Chapuys is far from being totally reliable, though criticisms of him often miss the point. He did not like England or the English and this seems to have offended later commentators on his diplomatic correspondence. But why should he have liked this small, chilly country on the north-west fringes of Europe with a devious and increasingly domineering monarch? The ambassador’s role there, at the time Chapuys took it up, was something of a poisoned chalice, difficult because of the sensitive and uncharted nature of the unfolding domestic drama. From the perspective of those advising the emperor across the North Sea in Brussels, English affairs often seemed peripheral to the multiplicity of considerations faced by CharlesV on the wider European stage. England had strange customs and a greedy, venal and violent ruling class. This was not a plum assignment, but it was a demanding one. Henry may have been concerned about the lack of a son, but Charles and those about him were frequently more worried about the proximity of the Turks and the designs of the French.

  Chapuys’ attitude towards the country in which he was to spend the better part of his professional life was no different from that of many educated Europeans who were his contemporaries. It would never have occurred to him to study English because it was not an international language, though by the end of his assignment he must have picked up a reasonable amount, having heard it spoken by servants and in private exchanges between the politicians he frequented.

  Besides, when all of those he dealt with spoke Latin, the common language of the day, or French (and sometimes both), he had no need to grapple with the native tongue of the country. Like all ambassadors, he employed spies and informers and he knew that their information was not always accurate. Some of what he passed on to Charles V and to Granvelle, the bishop of Arras, responsible for much of imperial diplomatic policy, was overstated or misguided. Occasionally, it was just plain wrong. Quite a lot of it was repetitive, a common problem when ambassadors were expected to report weekly and in detail. Coding and decoding were time-consuming and isolating, requiring literal burning of the midnight oil in rooms that were stuffy in summer and draughty in winter. Subordinates did some of this work, but the ambassador often did it himself. Chapuys’ grasp of English proper names, the towns and districts and the leading individuals often appears laughable, at least until we remember that there was no uniform spelling at the time. In the 1550s, Elizabeth, Mary’s half-sibling, would variously address her as ‘Dear Sister’ and ‘Dear Sistar’, so Chapuys can hardly be blamed for getting Jane Seymour’s surname wrong when she was first mentioned in court gossip.

  It is true that he represented what was happening in England almost entirely from the perspective of the central government. He only rarely travelled outside London and knew little of the rest of the country, but he saw no need to stray from the seat of power.Throughout his long stay, he resided near to the court at Greenwich, in the pleasantly rural and green outskirts to the east of London. Always he was close to the River Thames, the main artery of transport. In 1533, when Mary’s need of him suddenly became greater than her mother’s, he was living in the house of Sir Giles Cappel, west of Tower Hill. He was seldom, however, allowed to see the princess. The contacts were through servants and trusted intermediaries, who had greater freedom of movement. Those who came and went, facilitating vital communications between Mary and the ambassador, were almost never named. The king must have known about the existence of these contacts but he let them continue. It would have been difficult to put a stop to them altogether, unless Mary was put under 24-hour watch.

  Sometimes Chapuys’ activities and advice could easily have been viewed by the king and his council as fomenting discord and rebellion. Considerable forbearance was exhibited, but he does not seem to have been regarded as a serious threat, even when he advocated invasion by imperial troops to support Katherine of Aragon or made tentative plans for the escape overseas of Mary. How much faith he himself had in these schemes is a moot point.There is a feeling about them that he was occasionally frustrated by his inability to do anything practical to help Katherine and her daughter. Perhaps he also wanted to get Charles’s attention. Whatever the reason, it made no difference. The emperor himself had long since determined that he could be of very little direct assistance to his aunt and cousin.

  We owe much to Eustace Chapuys and his sense of duty and commitment to the task he had been given. Sixteen years in a court that was seldom genuinely welcoming, where nothing and no one could be taken at face value, put a premium on resourcefulness and self-
discipline. He had few friends in England, particularly after the death in 1532 of Archbishop Warham, but he was consoled by his continued exchange of letters with Erasmus. Without him, we would know far less than we do about this tumultuous period of English history. And Mary would have been deprived of the one figure she believed she could trust when her world crumbled. He tried to support her in a way that he believed appropriate to her rank and condition and to adapt his advice to keep pace with developments, while never losing sight of his imperial role. It was a difficult balance. She, no doubt, saw Chapuys as a wise counsellor, but in his genuine concern for her welfare, his outrage at the treatment she received and his pity for her mother, there is more than a hint of genuine affection. His own family, of many nieces and nephews and one acknowledged illegitimate son, were far away in Annecy, a town that he never saw again after 1529. He, like Mary, was basically alone.

  He also shared her distaste for the rise of new religious ideas. By education and temperament, he was attuned to the humanist ideas of Erasmus and other leading thinkers, but he would have no truck with heresy. For much of his long stay in England, Mary was one of his chief concerns. Her father might call her ‘The Lady Mary’; for Chapuys, she was always ‘the Princess’. He saw the changes that tragedy and pressure wrought in her and was dismayed.What he could do for her was, obviously, circumscribed, but he did his best. And it may be that, in the summer of 1536, when her relationship with her own father reached crisis point, he saved her life.