by Lucy Worsley
Mary’s hand crept up slowly to her mouth. It dawned on her that Jane was going to die, and leave her. Just as she had got her family back. This was impossible! Everything was impossible!
She barged her way forward, through the panicking women, and tried to take Jane’s hand again. It felt cold, and almost lifeless. But Jane knew that she was there.
She was whispering. Mary put her head down, almost touching Jane’s lips, and even so she could hardly hear.
‘Mary,’ Jane was saying, ‘you must take care of your brother and sister. And I know it’s hard to make your father listen, but you must let him know who you are. Let him know, very clearly … who you are. Speak up to him.’
Mary thought it was odd advice from the quiet, peace-loving Jane, but she decided to think about that later, when there was more time.
‘I will,’ said Mary. ‘But don’t worry. And thank you. You are …’
Mary choked. She had meant to say like a mother. But it seemed wrong. She couldn’t betray her mother like that. Or could she? ‘You are almost like a mother to me, Jane.’
‘I do want to live,’ Jane said, crying now, sobbing with all the strength she could muster. ‘I do want to live to see you happy, Mary.’
Then the nurses were taking Mary aside. She realised, too late, that they wanted to shield her from the sight of the very moment that her stepmother died.
Chapter 33
October 1537, Hampton Court
Mary did not attend the ceremony which saw the queen’s heart carried to its burial place in the chapel; women did not do such things. But she watched from the window as the procession set out through the gloomy courtyard. Its way was lit by the smallest pin-pricks of light from horn lanterns. It was like a shadow version of the same procession that had celebrated the christening of Jane’s baby with brightly burning torches.
Mary was in Edward’s nursery, rocking his cradle for herself. She had dismissed the rocking women, but of course they were hovering about only just beyond the door. They were too nervous to leave their precious charge unattended.
Every servant at court was in terror after the death of the queen. The king had raged and blamed everyone except his pale, perfect wife.
As Mary sat, and watched, and rocked, she thought over the events which had brought Jane, so sweet and pure, into danger. This business of the bearing of a son.
‘Why were you not content with me, Father?’ she cried silently into the blackness of the autumn sky. ‘All this could have been avoided. Jane could have been saved.’
She thought again of her mother, dying in lonely bafflement in that remote castle, and Jane, dying in the midst of such splendour and courtly concern at Hampton Court.
Both of them cold and dead, in the end. What had they in common? They had tried to please the king. They had loved Mary, but had left her.
She would remember her promise to Jane, to look after this baby boy, even if he had taken her place as heir. And then there was her sister, Elizabeth, likewise ousted from the succession. Mary could not be a good princess, it seemed. She could not, it seemed, be a good daughter, not good enough for her father, at any rate. But she would at least be a good sister. At the very least she would try.
There was a heavy step in the passage outside, and Mary looked up angrily. She had told the rockers and nurses that she would treat Edward carefully, and that he would come to no harm. Why could they not leave her alone?
To her surprise, it wasn’t the nurse, or the groom of Edward’s chambers.
It was her father. His face was a smeary mess of tears, and his cheeks were full and red. Mary stood up uncertainly.
‘I have been with Jane,’ he said, with a great snuffle.
Mary looked at him, almost ashamed. She was not supposed to see him like this; no one was. When he said he had been with Jane, she realised, he meant he had been sitting in her rooms beside her corpse. The queen’s body was laid out on her bed, surrounded by lit tapers, waiting for its ceremonial transportation to the royal vault at Windsor.
He came over to the cradle and leaned in to look at Edward. Putting out his great hand ever so carefully, he gave his son the gentlest of strokes on his cheek. Mary had not thought that her father could have been so deft.
Then he straightened, and sniffed again, and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. Blinking them open, he looked at her closely.
‘Mary,’ he said, ‘I need to talk to you.’
Mary’s stomach did an uncomfortable flip. What now? What wickedness or devilry had he in mind? Was the Wheel of Fortune about to hurl her even lower?
‘No, no,’ he said, seeing her expression.
With a cracking report from his knees, he settled his bulk down on to a stool near hers, so that they were on the same level. Mary glanced around. It was so unusual to be all alone with her father. In fact, she could never remember it having happened before.
But wait, he was speaking and she wasn’t even listening.
‘… before she died,’ he was saying, ‘Jane told me something of what happened to you. She was so angry. Lord love me! I had never seen her speak so passionately as she did then. I didn’t know she had it in her. Now listen, I promise you, Mary, I did not know what they did to you. I promise you that I never ordered it to happen. I wanted you to sign the Act of Succession, of course I did, but they exceeded my orders.’
‘But, Father,’ Mary responded, ‘it was difficult. But I … have survived. You can see that. I’m here, and I’m well, and I’m very, very sad about Jane, but really and truly I have survived.’
She bowed her head. She’d spoken almost without thought. In the end, when she’d had the chance to tell him how she hated what he’d done, it turned out that it didn’t matter. It was in the past. She had come through it. What mattered was the future – Edward’s, Elizabeth’s and hers.
There was a long pause. Was this what he wanted to hear? How would he react?
Finally he looked up at her.
‘You have survived,’ he said. ‘More than that, you have thrived. And I want to speak to you of years to come.’
He continued, louder, pulling at Mary’s hand and bringing her to her feet. He was speaking now as if there were other people in the room with them. ‘Mary is to be the first lady of the court,’ he declaimed, ‘and to bring up her sister and her brother. My three children will all live together and love each other. She needs to continue the work that Jane started.’
Mary gasped.
For almost as long as she could remember, every time her father had opened his mouth she’d wished his words had been a little different. But now he was saying exactly what she would have willed.
‘You, Mary,’ he continued, ‘have been a true child to me. And you were a true daughter to … to the sweetest lady who ever walked the earth, and before her, to a Spanish princess who did her best to please me for many years.’
He was hardly apologising. But he was suggesting that sometimes, in the past, he had been wrong.
A warm, calm feeling came over Mary.
‘I do see that you have survived my mistakes,’ he said, addressing her directly now, simply and straightforwardly.
They stood there, face-to-face. It struck Mary that he was speaking to her as if she were grown up, as if they were equals.
‘I think that you have the fire and spirit of your mother,’ he continued, ‘but I think you also have the grace and patience of Jane. If the worst should happen –’ and here he looked at Edward in his crib – ‘I think you would make a good queen.’
Then he turned away and tucked his thumbs into the armholes of his gown as if to rest his arms. It made him look weary, like an old man.
‘Probably a better queen than I am king,’ he muttered. ‘I’m getting old, and tired, and people take advantage of me.’ He paused. ‘And who knows, Mary? I have three children, but God is cruel. Many men lose their sons before they are grown. And then, why then, Mary will be queen.’
He raised hi
s hand, and laid it heavily upon her shoulder. Mary covered it with her own hand, and dipped her chin to her chest.
She took several deep breaths.
‘Father,’ she said eventually, ‘I think I have been waiting for you to say that for my whole life.’
Epilogue
Why I Wrote This Book
This is a story based on events from real-life history. Some characters and happenings have been missed out, but it’s absolutely true that the Princess Mary was demoted to ‘Lady Mary’ when Anne Boleyn’s daughter, Elizabeth, was born. Mary really did refuse to eat rather than accept the situation. And she did finally give in, return to court, and attend her baby brother Edward’s christening.
What happened next after the story told in Lady Mary finishes? King Henry the Eighth wasn’t wrong to worry that something bad might one day befall Mary’s brother, Edward.
Edward spent a good deal of time with Mary during his childhood, but then, at the age of fifteen, he suddenly fell ill, and died.
By that time, the supporters of Anne Boleyn’s New Religion – they’d end up being called Protestants – had once again grown strong at court. They argued that the next ruler should be neither Mary, nor Elizabeth, but their cousin, Lady Jane Grey, who was a Protestant too. Lady Jane Grey’s family took control of London, and the Tower, and thrust her upon the throne.
But Mary was having none of this. Schooled by her fierce mother, toughened by the difficult times she’d experienced as she was growing up, and drawing on her own immense inner strength, she roused an army in East Anglia to march on the capital. She was successful, and on 1 October 1553, she was crowned in Westminster Abbey.
This makes her – surprisingly – the only member of the Tudor dynasty to have seized the throne by force in the whole of the sixteenth century.
Queen Mary the First has a bad reputation today, mainly because as soon as she could, she restored the old Catholic religion.
Her younger sister, Elizabeth, reigning after her, reversed that decision, and took England back in a Protestant direction. This meant that Mary, England’s first ever queen, has been vilified by the Protestant historians who wrote about her reign but who didn’t share her religion. Their voices were louder than those of Mary’s own Catholic supporters. That’s why the Protestant view of her dominates our history books, and why people call her ‘Bloody Mary’.
Mary the First is often, and rightly, blamed for the deaths of many Protestants who were killed because of their religion under her regime.
But people often forget that her father and sister, Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth, also, in their turn, burned many Catholics. In sixteenth-century terms, Mary’s actions weren’t exceptionally cruel or unusual.
Of course, two wrongs don’t make a right. But I think that today, when we live in a secular society, and it’s fine to be Protestant or Catholic or whatever you want, we should perhaps try to look past the religious debates of the sixteenth century.
Perhaps we can now perceive that despite the anti-Catholic propaganda that’s tarnished her image, Mary was in fact a ruler of remarkable tenacity and strength. She showed courage, and nerve. She always sought a family, and wished to have children with her husband, Philip of Spain. It was a tragedy for her that she could not.
Mary made mistakes, but even her errors had one fortunate consequence. When her younger half-sister, Elizabeth, became queen in Mary’s wake, she did such a good job that she’s widely acknowledged to have been English history’s most impressive sovereign.
I believe one of the reasons Queen Elizabeth the First is so widely admired is that she watched, and learned from, her sister, Mary.
Acknowledgements
My sincere thanks go to the talented Chloe Moss, who wrote the drama scenes in our television series Six Wives with Lucy Worsley (BBC One and PBS). A line Chloe wrote for Henry the Eighth – ‘Remember what happened to my last wife!’ – sparked off the idea for this story, and is included here with her generous permission. Secondly, Anna Whitelock’s brilliant non-fiction history book, Mary Tudor: England’s First Queen (Bloomsbury), argues that Mary should no longer be simply dismissed as ‘bloody’. It helped me to see Mary in the new way I’ve shown her here. I also continue to be enormously grateful to the magnificent team I work with at Bloomsbury, particularly Helen Vick, Lizz Skelly, Charlotte Armstrong and above all editor Zöe Griffiths.
About the author
Lucy Worsley is Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces, the independent charity that runs the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace and other sites, which attract more than four million visitors a year. Lucy also presents history programmes for the BBC on topics including royal palaces and the court, such as Britain’s Tudor Treasure with David Starkey. Her recent television series, Six Wives with Lucy Worsley, is about the wives of King Henry the Eighth.
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First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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Illustrations copyright © Joe Berger, 2018
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