Manox seems to have disappeared from the scene after his interrogation. Detailed Tudor records mention no fine, imprisonment, or execution. Perhaps he fled England, or faded into a welcome mundane life with a woman who would never become a queen.
A new law was passed retroactively that stated if the king should “take a fancy to any woman,” believing her to be “a pure and clean maid when indeed the proof may or shall after appear contrary,” and should the lady “couple herself with her Sovereign Lord” without informing him of “her unchaste life,” then “every such offense shall be deemed and adjudged High Treason.”65
Most adultery trials of queens were closed, their details hidden from public view, but Henry invited all the foreign ambassadors to witness this one. Indeed, the French ambassador wrote to King François I in Paris, “Many people thought the publication of the foul details strange, but the intention is to prevent it being said afterwards that they were unjustly condemned.”66 And condemned they were. On February 11, 1542, Catherine’s death warrant for high treason was signed, along with that of Lady Rochford.
After having lived a thoughtless life, Catherine gave great thought to her death. She asked that a block be brought in to the Tower so she could practice laying her head on it properly and not feel awkward the morning of her execution. Since dying well was considered even more important than living well, for it was the last impression left behind, Catherine met death with a dignity she had never possessed in life.
And so Catherine Howard was sacrificed to the vicious ambitions of the Howard clan and their jealous enemies. Just as in the sacrifice of an ox in the ancient world, she was laden with flowers and marched to an altar where, soon after, the swift flash of steel ended her life.
4. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY: ESCAPE FROM THE GILDED CAGE
For glances beget ogles, ogles sighs,
Sighs wishes, wishes words, and words a letter…
And then, God knows what mischief may arise,
When love links two young people in one fetter,
Vile assignations, and adulterous beds,
Elopements, broken vows and hearts and heads.
—LORD BYRON
SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY MONARCHS WERE SOMEWHAT LESS brutal to their unfaithful wives than Henry VIII; though some queen consorts indeed lost their heads over handsome men, not a single one did so in the literal sense. Many hoped to escape from the servitude of an unhappy marriage, though this was usually only possible in widowhood. A divorce or annulment offered jubilant freedom spiced with disgrace. And some dreamed of true escape, the escape of simply running away.
MARIA FRANCISCA OF SAVOY, QUEEN OF PORTUGAL
“This Disagreeable Frenchwoman”
The summer of 1666, the eighteen-year-old Princess Maria Francisca Isabel de Savoy arrived with her retinue in Lisbon harbor to marry King Alfonso VI of Portugal. Delighted at the prospect of being a queen, she had turned a deaf ear to rumors that her new husband was fat, impotent, and mentally retarded. Many people were just jealous, she thought. True, the king had suffered a nearly fatal fever at the age of three which left him slightly paralyzed on his right side. True, his tutors had given up in despair trying to make him sit still and learn something. True, he had once tried to shoot a comet out of the sky, and his favorite pastime was galloping through the streets with his ruffian friends, knocking down pedestrians. But most kings suffered from some debility or other, and at twenty-three, he really couldn’t be all that bad.
When the satin-clad crowds rushed onto her ship to welcome their new queen, Maria Francisca looked about for her new husband in vain. King Alfonso was in the palace hiding. He did not want to get married and had only agreed to it once he realized a refusal would result in his throne going to his younger brother, Pedro. Pedro, handsome, intelligent, beloved by all. Pedro, whom the Portuguese would have preferred as their king. Alfonso would do anything to prevent Pedro from ascending the throne, even if it meant that Alfonso, hopelessly impotent, married a princess.
The king had tried to counter the reputation of his impotence by surrounding himself with the most infamous prostitutes, whom he paid generously to tell stories of his sexual exploits. He even found a little girl who resembled him and, claiming her as his illegitimate daughter, brought her out at public events. The child’s mother was forced to walk along casting longing glances at the king, which he ardently returned. Only later did she swear that she had never had sex with the king, though he had tried, and the child had been fathered by her cousin.
Now despite all his efforts at pretended virility, Alfonso had been backed into a corner. If he had stayed a bachelor, his incapacity might have been rumored but never proved. Now it was only a matter of time before the whole world knew for sure.
And now, with the bride waiting, Alfonso’s anxious ministers finally prevailed upon the king to row out to the ship. At first glance Maria Francisca finally understood all the rumors about her new husband. He was so terribly obese that he looked like a huge barrel set on two stubby pegs. Too lazy to leave his bed for meals, Alfonso was served his huge portions lying down. Required to hear Mass in the morning, he allowed the priests to celebrate it in his bedroom but insisted they not wake him.
Alfonso was so terrified of catching cold when he did venture forth that he wore six or seven mismatched coats, one on top of the other, and three or four hats, perched one on top of the other. When this epitome of royal grandeur was presented to his lovely bride, he made a face—a grin thought some, a grimace said others—and left. The new queen looked with shock at the ungainly bulk of her retreating husband, and then her eyes strayed to his handsome, slender brother bowing before her. It must have been a relief to her in the coming months that her repulsive husband never once touched her. The king rarely set foot in the queen’s apartments, but his brother visited for several hours each day. Bereft of a real husband, Maria Francisca became close—some said too close—to her brother-in-law.
Because the marriage remained unconsummated, Prince Pedro and the queen were keenly aware of the possibility of an annulment. And if the marriage were annulled, perhaps they could receive a papal dispensation and marry each other. If Alfonso were put away for mental incompetence, they could rule Portugal. To this end they formed their own faction at court—the anti-Alfonso faction—and started winning powerful courtiers over to their side. For Alfonso was no better a king than he was a husband; his cruel favorites acted with impunity, and the country was swiftly falling into a state of anarchy. The queen’s relationship with Pedro offered political advantages to the nobles who encouraged it. No outraged accusations of adultery would echo through the Portuguese court to condemn the queen.
Alfonso, fascinated by sex despite his impotence, often hired talented prostitutes to climb into his bed and stimulate him as best they could. When he had had enough, he invited his friends, who had been watching, to jump into bed and finish the business. The king received a certain satisfaction from watching others reach climax even if he could not.
The queen, unconcerned by her husband’s pathetic escapades with whores, was deeply concerned that he seemed desirous of doing the same thing with her—playing with her and then calling in his favorites to finish the job so she would become pregnant. A pregnancy would solve all his problems; he would remain king, a virile potent king, and eclipse the despised Pedro forever.
Beginning in April 1667 Alfonso continually solicited Maria Francisca to visit him in his apartments late at night in the company of two of his lusty favorites. According to custom, if the king wanted to sleep with the queen at night, he went to her apartments, with her ladies hovering nearby, never the other way around. Suspecting what he had in mind, the queen politely refused to visit him in his apartments. His face red with rage, Alfonso put his hand on his sword and vowed that if she did not come of her own accord within twenty-four hours, he would drag her to his bed or have her carried there by four of his attendants.
Maria Francisca, never knowing when she would
be carted into the king’s rooms and raped, finally had enough. On November 22, 1667, she retired to a convent and sent word to Alfonso that she considered the marriage null and void due to nonconsummation after sixteen months. As soon as the king received the letter, he raced to the convent to drag her out. When the doors were not opened despite his furious knocking, Alfonso called for axes to break them down. At that point Prince Pedro arrived with a large retinue of armed men vowing to defend the queen, and the defeated monarch rode slowly home.
Alfonso’s worst nightmare had come true. When he waddled back to the palace, he was taken prisoner and admitted his impotence under questioning. The bishop of Lisbon decreed the marriage null and void.
When the queen wrote the council asking permission to return home with her dowry, the councilors presented themselves at the convent door with hats in their hands and tears in their eyes, begging her not to abandon the realm. And besides, they had already spent the dowry. Exactly as she had foreseen, they implored her to marry Pedro and stay on as their queen. Everyone admired the way she had deftly handled her idiot husband. Portugal needed such a queen. The council went to Pedro and begged him to marry Maria Francisca for the good of the nation. The prince gallantly replied that he would. But when they asked him to accept the throne as well, Pedro refused. As a matter of honor, he would not become king as long as his brother lived, but would rule for him as regent.
Alfonso was placed in genteel confinement. When the deposed monarch learned that his marriage had been annulled and his bride handed over to Pedro, he said, “Ah, well! I don’t doubt that my poor brother will soon regret having been mixed up with this disagreeable Frenchwoman as much as I do.”1
Maria Francisca had gotten the man she wanted, kept her position as Portugal’s highest lady, and nine months after the wedding gave birth to a daughter. Despite her happiness, she never forgave her former husband and reveled in disparaging him. “After getting drunk according to his wont,” she wrote her sister, “he fell with his head in a basin of water, where he would certainly have been drowned if someone had not promptly pulled him out; but though he lives as a brute beast, he lives, and that is sufficient to keep us always anxious and exposed to the malice of our enemies.”2 Like Maria Francisca, many Portuguese feared that if Alfonso escaped, he would round up his former favorites, punish those who had deposed him and wreak havoc in the realm.
Though poison never passed Alfonso’s lips, Pedro made sure that plenty of alcohol did, in the hopes that his brother would drink himself to death. One day, however, Alfonso pledged himself to sobriety, much to the irritation of the Portuguese government. The ambassador of Savoy wrote that Alfonso’s Jesuit jailer had spoken of his regained health with “evident regret.”3
But in the end it was food, not liquor, that did him in. With nothing to do, the prisoner grew fatter than ever. He could barely rise from his bed and had difficulty fitting through a doorway. According to some reports, walking became such an ordeal that he would lie down on the floor and call for an attendant to roll him down the hallway. After fifteen years’ confinement he died of a stroke in 1683 at the age of forty. Pedro and Maria Francisca became king and queen in name as well as in fact.
The Portuguese prided themselves on the fact that Alfonso had lived so many years after his abdication despite the threat he posed. “If these things had happened in Spain,” a Jesuit priest cheerfully pointed out to the ambassador of Savoy, “the King of Portugal would not have lasted so long; but here we are good Christians.”4
MARGUERITE-LOUISE OF FRANCE, GRAND DUCHESS OF TUSCANY
“You Would Never Die but by My Hand”
The one royal woman to escape her marital prison without the sudden blessing of widowhood or annulment was Marguerite-Louise d’Orléans, the first cousin of Louis XIV. In 1661, at the age of sixteen, the princess was married by proxy to Duke Cosimo de Medici, heir to the Tuscan throne of his father, Grand Duke Ferdinand II. The bride was petite, voluptuous, and boasted sparkling turquoise eyes and chestnut ringlets. When marriage negotiations had commenced three years earlier, the prospective groom was struck with wonder by her portrait, and she was suitably impressed by his.
But by the time the marriage contract was signed, Marguerite had fallen deeply in love with her cousin, Prince Charles of Lorraine. A swashbuckling soldier, the eighteen-year-old stormed Versailles with the irresistible aroma of gunpowder wafting about him. The young man, recently captured on the field of battle, could boast of having just been released from a Spanish prison. Of royal blood, Charles would have made an acceptable bridegroom for a French princess.
But Louis XIV had already signed the marriage documents with the court of Tuscany. Refusing to go back on his word and lose his royal dignity, he forced his cousin to fulfill his contractual obligations. Marguerite, however, was born with an uncontrollable temperament ill-suited to her royal position. Even as a child, she did not accept refusals meekly. Once, when she was told she could not go riding, she broke down the stable door, soundly cursing the grooms who stood by helplessly, grabbed a saddle, and threw it on the horse herself. Neither would she accept her marriage obediently. When the groom sent her an enormous diamond engagement ring, to show her disdain of her future husband, Marguerite gave it to one of her ladies-in-waiting.
En route to her new realm, the bride dawdled, insisting on staying longer in various cities than planned, intentionally upsetting the elaborate preparations made for her along the way and her grand welcome to Tuscany. When she finally met her groom, she wished that she had dawdled longer. Instead of the attractive prince depicted in the portrait, Marguerite’s husband had bulging eyes, a jutting chin, thick wavy red lips, and large deformed ears that poked through his long curly hair. The unappealing head topped a thick squat body.
Worse than his physical appearance was his personality— “melancholy and somber,” according to the bishop of Marseille.5 Cosimo spent most of his time on his knees in front of an altar, praying. His new wife, however, “is all gallantry; she likes nothing more than singing, dancing and giving parties,” according to the envoy of the republic of Luca. “The prince is all gravity,” wrote the papal nuncio, “but the princess loves nothing more than laughing.”6 It was agreed that never were two characters so vastly different in temperament and education.
Marguerite cast a disapproving glance around the rather moldy grandeur of Florence. When asked how she liked her new land, she invariably replied that she would rather be back in France. Cosimo gave splendid balls, sumptuous feasts, ballets, and plays to entertain his bride, but nothing, she sniffed, could compare to the splendor of those held at the court of Versailles.
The princess found not only his theatrical performances lackluster, but also his sexual performance. After a full month of marriage, “The prince only rendered his marital duty to her three times,” the Florentine bishop wrote to the French minister Nicolas Fouquet. “On all other evenings he sent a valet to her chambers saying he would not require her services that evening. Her French ladies-in-waiting expressed surprise at such compliments.” The bride’s sister explained, “This small show of eagerness made her put her back up and became the pretext for sour wrangling.”7
Perhaps as punishment for her husband’s lack of ardor, or the fact that she had been forced against her will to marry him in the first place, Marguerite lavishly spent his money. Her cook was ordered to obtain the most expensive meats; her kitchen cost more for one day’s meals than the grand duke spent in ten. When a merchant showed her dozens of costly bolts of fabric, she took them all and told him to send the bill to her father-in-law. Leaving the palace empty-handed, the ecstatic merchant— suddenly rich—ran into the grand duke and thanked him profusely for his generosity.
As retribution for her wild spending and bad temper, Grand Duke Ferdinand ordered home Marguerite’s retinue of French ladies. As revenge, she gave the women some of the most dazzling crown jewels of Tuscany to smuggle back to France. Only with difficulty were they retrieved
.
When a royal woman wished to leave the palace, protocol demanded that she obtain permission from her husband, order the royal carriage and the entourage of cavalry to escort her, and climb in with her ladies-in-waiting. But Marguerite took to coming and going as she pleased, simply walking out of the palace alone and disappearing for hours. Her father-in-law put bolts on all her apartment doors, even those leading to the gardens, and set spies among her staff. She was allowed to emerge from her prison for two purposes—promenades along country paths just outside Florence and court events.
Marguerite used court events as opportunities to insult her husband, stating loudly that he not only made a terrible prince, he would make a terrible stable boy, and that she would rather roast in hell without him than luxuriate in paradise with him. As chastisement, the grand duke sent her to a lonely hunting lodge in the swamps, with forty soldiers and six horsemen to follow her wherever she went to make sure she did not run away. But Marguerite ran so fast, so far, for so many hours, that upon their return to the palace the soldiers were seen gasping for breath and clutching their sides in pain.
When Marguerite caught malaria, she claimed the royal family of Tuscany was trying to murder her, but that she would, in fact, rather die than return to her husband. Louis XIV asked the pope to threaten excommunication if Marguerite persisted, and the pontiff sent her a harsh letter. She didn’t fear hell, she replied. She was already living in it.
It is, perhaps, a miracle that in nine years Marguerite gave birth to three children. Furious each time she learned that she was pregnant, she tried to induce a miscarriage by vigorous riding. When she was forbidden access to the stables, she insisted on exhausting walks for hours in the gardens. When these, too, were prohibited, she tried to starve herself to death, but her hunger proved greater than her resolve.
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