Mary Tudor (13 page)
Authors: Linda Porter
Even when Elizabeth Howard was sent away, there were others willing to risk a great deal for the queen. Gertrude Courtenay, marchioness of Exeter, acted in the
Chateau Vert
masque with Anne Boleyn on Anne’s debut at the English court and had known her for some time. But they were not friends and Gertrude, who attended Katherine of Aragon at the Field of Cloth of Gold, was loyal to the queen. She acted as a useful go-between from the court to Katherine, via the imperial ambassador. Her family’s position was a difficult and rather inconsistent one (Gertrude’s husband had signed the petition of the English nobility to the pope to have the king’s marriage to Katherine annulled), but the marchioness herself was clearly sympathetic on a personal level to Katherine and Mary. The Exeters were religious conservatives who found the progression towards separation of the English Church from Rome, as the divorce questioned dragged on, disturbing.This may explain Gertrude’s interest in another woman, from a very different background, whose opposition to the divorce disturbed Henry far more than the independent outlook of a few court ladies, irritating though they undoubtedly were in his eyes.Yet none of them had spoken openly of a threat to the king’s life if he did not abandon his plans to repudiate the queen. That chilling message was contained in the prophecies of a young nun at Canterbury, Elizabeth Barton.
Chateau Vert
masque with Anne Boleyn on Anne’s debut at the English court and had known her for some time. But they were not friends and Gertrude, who attended Katherine of Aragon at the Field of Cloth of Gold, was loyal to the queen. She acted as a useful go-between from the court to Katherine, via the imperial ambassador. Her family’s position was a difficult and rather inconsistent one (Gertrude’s husband had signed the petition of the English nobility to the pope to have the king’s marriage to Katherine annulled), but the marchioness herself was clearly sympathetic on a personal level to Katherine and Mary. The Exeters were religious conservatives who found the progression towards separation of the English Church from Rome, as the divorce questioned dragged on, disturbing.This may explain Gertrude’s interest in another woman, from a very different background, whose opposition to the divorce disturbed Henry far more than the independent outlook of a few court ladies, irritating though they undoubtedly were in his eyes.Yet none of them had spoken openly of a threat to the king’s life if he did not abandon his plans to repudiate the queen. That chilling message was contained in the prophecies of a young nun at Canterbury, Elizabeth Barton.
The Nun of Kent was a well-known figure by 1528 and sufficiently regarded for the king himself to seek the views of Thomas More on her sayings and visions. More was unimpressed, finding nothing exceptional in Elizabeth’s utterances. He commented that he saw in them only something that ‘a right simple woman might, in my mind, speak of her own wit well enough’. Wolsey, who had two meetings with Elizabeth, may have been the person who suggested to the king that it was worth hearing from the nun herself. Henry agreed and Barton was given access to the very pinnacle of Tudor power.
Such proximity to the great fed delusions of invincibility. Elizabeth Barton was now far removed from the humble social sphere in which she had begun life.Yet with her celebrity status came a growing sense of unreality that was to be her undoing. By the late 1520s her prophecies contained much more overtly political content. There were declamations that papal authority must be maintained and heresy rooted out. Most seriously of all, from Henry’s perspective, this uneducated woman who had discussed her visions with him now made a sustained onslaught on the divorce itself. She emerged as a major supporter of Katherine of Aragon.
The visions concerning the king and his marriage were detailed and specific. An angel told Elizabeth Barton that if Henry put aside Katherine of Aragon and married Anne Boleyn, God’s vengeance would overtake him: ‘then within one month after such marriage he should no longer be king of this realm, and in the reputation of almighty God should not be a king one day nor one hour but would die a villain’s death’.
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Even more chilling was the nun’s revelation that she had seen the precise spot prepared for the king in hell. This was strong stuff. Henry was an intelligent, well-educated prince, but he was also a man of his times. Languishing in hell was the ultimate dread and the nun’s conviction that she knew the site of his eternal torments, delivered to his face, was deeply unsettling. Determined that her prophecies would be known in high places, Elizabeth Barton did not back off; both archbishop Warham and Wolsey were informed that they would also be destroyed if they countenanced the king’s marriage to Anne Boleyn.
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Even more chilling was the nun’s revelation that she had seen the precise spot prepared for the king in hell. This was strong stuff. Henry was an intelligent, well-educated prince, but he was also a man of his times. Languishing in hell was the ultimate dread and the nun’s conviction that she knew the site of his eternal torments, delivered to his face, was deeply unsettling. Determined that her prophecies would be known in high places, Elizabeth Barton did not back off; both archbishop Warham and Wolsey were informed that they would also be destroyed if they countenanced the king’s marriage to Anne Boleyn.
Some people were repelled by these increasingly violent denunciations but others at least wanted to meet the Nun of Kent themselves. Gertrude Courtenay, evidently aware of the risk she was running, came in disguise to meet her at Canterbury and subsequently Gertrude and her husband received the nun at one of their properties in Surrey, where the young woman fell into a trance. Elizabeth Barton did not disappoint. For so long as she was viewed as a genuine seer, speaking the true word of God, the nun and her advisers might have expected that her uncompromising stance was permissible under the guise of ‘frank counsel’. For a while, even the king wondered whether the Nun of Kent might be divinely inspired.
The queen was well aware of the efforts of her supporters and the tenacity of the women who supported her cause. She also realised that the personal risks they took would have only a minimal impact on the outcome of her struggle.The key to Katherine’s campaign, and the cause of growing bitterness between herself and Henry, however polite they may have seemed at official functions, was the queen’s decision in June 1529 to ask that her case be heard in Rome. Henry had always wanted, indeed expected, papal involvement, but on his own terms. He greatly resented the idea of being summoned to Rome and interrogated by the pope. This was not just annoyance at what the king and his party regarded as troublesome gamesmanship by a fractious woman; papal interference of this sort was an affront to his authority and what he increasingly saw as his unchallengeable position as sovereign of both England and its Church.And there was, too, the disquieting prospect that because Katherine had also played the imperial card, his domestic problems might be used as the excuse for military action by the emperor.
Katherine always maintained, even after Henry married Anne Boleyn, that she sought her nephew’s moral support to save the king from error and the country from excommunication and heresy. Even at moments of desperation, she did not want imperial troops invading England in her defence. She was fighting a war, but it was a war of argument and strategy, not swords. In the end, it did become brutal, but the brutality was Henry’s, not Katherine’s or the emperor’s. Charles’s response to Katherine’s situation was a pragmatic one, inevitably fashioned by the dictates of his imperial role.To the queen he wrote letters expressing his indignation and concern, but they were more proper than fiery: ‘I cannot express it otherwise than by assuring you that were my own mother concerned I should not experience greater sorrow than in this your case,’ he wrote at the end of August 1527.
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Not much comfort here, then, as his own mother was very much still alive but widely regarded as mentally unbalanced and living in retreat in Spain. Katherine most definitely would resist a similar fate.
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Not much comfort here, then, as his own mother was very much still alive but widely regarded as mentally unbalanced and living in retreat in Spain. Katherine most definitely would resist a similar fate.
In the summer of 1527 Charles was much more concerned to salvage his international image, badly shattered by his armies’ behaviour in Italy. He issued a manifesto to all the princes of Europe, protesting at the calumnies spread against him, ‘as if he could be the author of the Sack of Rome’. In an indirect way, he was, and he knew it.The marriage difficulties of Henry and Katherine did not figure high on his list of priorities, though there was always the possibility that it was all part of some French-inspired plot against himself. Yet his Habsburg sense of family loyalty was piqued by the insult to his aunt, though he hardly knew her personally and had met his cousin, Mary, only once. ‘We cannot desert the queen, our good aunt, in her troubles and intend doing all we can in her favour,’ he wrote to his ambassador in London. Discretion and moderation were the best way forward, and he had told Henry this in a letter. He could not believe ‘that having, as they have, so sweet a princess for their daughter [the king] would consent to have her or her mother dishonoured, a thing so monstrous of itself and wholly without precedent in ancient or modern history’.
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In this description of Mary, whom he cast squarely as the person most likely to be adversely affected by Henry’s behaviour, there is, perhaps, just the hint of guilt for his own treatment of a young princess. Denied her opportunity to be empress, she was now threatened with illegitimacy. It must be a terrible blow, and he would undoubtedly do all he could in bringing pressure to bear on the pope, so that Katherine and Mary would have justice. But he was never going to fight. Upheaval in his northern European domains and the constant threat of war with France were far more pressing concerns.
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In this description of Mary, whom he cast squarely as the person most likely to be adversely affected by Henry’s behaviour, there is, perhaps, just the hint of guilt for his own treatment of a young princess. Denied her opportunity to be empress, she was now threatened with illegitimacy. It must be a terrible blow, and he would undoubtedly do all he could in bringing pressure to bear on the pope, so that Katherine and Mary would have justice. But he was never going to fight. Upheaval in his northern European domains and the constant threat of war with France were far more pressing concerns.
And so the divorce, the King’s Great Matter as it was called in English circles, dragged on for six years, far beyond the worst fears of the king and his supporters. It became a European
cause célèbre
, as the best theological and legal minds of the day were put to work on it and the pope, escaped from Charles V’s direct control to Orvieto in Italy, decided that the safest course of action for him was to play off each side against the other for as long as possible. Determined that right was on his side, Henry spent large sums of money on canvassing the opinions of the universities of Europe, rather as senior executives in large corporations now employ consultants to tell them things they want to hear. The universities were only too happy to receive this unlooked-for funding, but they did not give the English king the definitive answer he hoped to get. Katherine also dug her heels in and fought with ferocity a rearguard action, knowing full well that she had few influential friends in England, though popular sentiment appears to have been on her side.
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But her determination, though understandable, did not mean that what she was doing was ultimately the right thing for her daughter.
cause célèbre
, as the best theological and legal minds of the day were put to work on it and the pope, escaped from Charles V’s direct control to Orvieto in Italy, decided that the safest course of action for him was to play off each side against the other for as long as possible. Determined that right was on his side, Henry spent large sums of money on canvassing the opinions of the universities of Europe, rather as senior executives in large corporations now employ consultants to tell them things they want to hear. The universities were only too happy to receive this unlooked-for funding, but they did not give the English king the definitive answer he hoped to get. Katherine also dug her heels in and fought with ferocity a rearguard action, knowing full well that she had few influential friends in England, though popular sentiment appears to have been on her side.
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But her determination, though understandable, did not mean that what she was doing was ultimately the right thing for her daughter.
Katherine always maintained that her stand was as much about Mary and Mary’s future as it was about herself, but in this she was deceived. An understandable self-deception, in the circumstances, but it was not the whole truth. The queen may have been a deeply religious woman, but she was not meek. She refused to accept any compromise, partly out of moral certainty but also because she was the queen and the daughter of great monarchs. Anne Boleyn was so far below her that she would never concede to such a person. Yet at one crucial stage in the convoluted proceedings, as early as 1528, Katherine was offered a way out that promised Mary security. She refused to take it.
Pride, intense attachment to her marriage and also a degree of suspicion that assurances given might not be honoured all swirled in her mind when the Italian cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio put to Katherine in October 1528 the possibility that there was a solution to her dilemma: ‘In order to do away with the scruples and other greater evils which the discord between her and her husband was likely to produce … and in order to remove any difficulties as to the succession to the crown of England, he [the pope] thought the best expedient to be adopted was that she should profess in some religious community and take vows of perpetual chastity.’ Katherine could end all the unpleasantness by taking the veil. This would leave the king free to marry again and did not call into question Mary’s legitimacy or her claim to the throne. The queen was not impressed. She ‘at first showed a little irritation … and spoke some angry words to Wolsey, hinting that he was the cause of all of her misfortunes’. After time for reflection, she calmed down and delivered a withering riposte: ‘she held her husband’s conscience and honour in more esteem than anything in this world; that she entertained no scruple at all about her marriage, but considered herself the true and legitimate wife of the king … the proposal just made in the name of His Holiness was inadmissible’.
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She would not be pushed aside, either into a rural retirement, as the king had first suggested, or a religious one. First and foremost, she clung to the idea that her marriage was legal. She was a queen and a wife, not a nun. Even raising the doubt that her daughter might be illegitimate was an insult to Katherine’s personal integrity.Yet both Mary and England itself might have been spared much trauma if the queen had followed the precedent offered by the first wife of the French king, Louis XII, and entered a convent. But Katherine would not compromise and so Mary’s future was inextricably linked with her mother’s fate.
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She would not be pushed aside, either into a rural retirement, as the king had first suggested, or a religious one. First and foremost, she clung to the idea that her marriage was legal. She was a queen and a wife, not a nun. Even raising the doubt that her daughter might be illegitimate was an insult to Katherine’s personal integrity.Yet both Mary and England itself might have been spared much trauma if the queen had followed the precedent offered by the first wife of the French king, Louis XII, and entered a convent. But Katherine would not compromise and so Mary’s future was inextricably linked with her mother’s fate.
Certainly the circumstances of Campeggio’s proposal did not improve the queen’s frame of mind. He was sent to London to preside, with Wolsey, over a legatine court that would adjudicate the annulment of the marriage. Henry expected that the court would find for him, but he did not know that the pope had given Campeggio instructions that he was to stall as long as possible and that he was definitely not to reach a decision.The cardinal, who was very ill with gout and had endured an awful journey to England, must have prayed that the queen would agree to his suggestion, thus sparing him months of fruitless going through the motions. If so, his prayers went unanswered, though he was much more successful when it came to delaying proceedings.
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