Mary Tudor (2 page)

Read Mary Tudor Online

Authors: Linda Porter

Over time, she had been rehabilitated, even restored to the succession, but her illegitimacy remained. Her father’s death left her a wealthy and independent woman. She was still denied the title of princess but she was her brother Edward’s heir, by statute law and their father’s will. But then arguments over religion began to threaten her security once more. The young king’s councillors, those men with long beards in London, dared to tell her that she could not hear mass in her own house. She defied them and, in so doing, became a figurehead for opposition. She had known the price, even considered fleeing the country to be with her Habsburg relatives, but she was, at heart, an Englishwoman. And so she stayed, not realising that her brother, too, would turn against her.
All of this darts through her mind as she contemplates her situation. It is clear that the young king is dying and that she faces a period of great danger. The succession has been changed illegally in favour of her cousin, Jane Grey, but, in reality, to serve the ends of the duke of Northumberland. She has known him for 15 years, sensed his frustrated ambition when he lost position at the time of her father’s divorce from Anne of Cleves, and watched apprehensively as luck and cunning helped him manoeuvre his way to supreme power.They have clashed openly, in front of the privy council. She knows his true feelings. He will keep her away from the throne that is rightfully hers if he can. She accepts that her liberty - and probably her life - is forfeit if he captures her. Whatever the future holds, she must now shape it herself, with the help of her loyal servants and the people who make up her affinity.They are not the great dukes and nobles of England but men of the lesser aristocracy. Like her, they support the old religion, the one true faith in which she has lived and will die.
So she sits and prays for guidance, to the God her mother’s family has worshipped for centuries, as England itself did only six short years ago. And then it comes to her with absolute certainty that she will prevail. All the doubts and fears evaporate in that one moment of divine conviction. This time, at last, the Lord is with her. Besides, she has always loved a wager and there could be no greater gamble than the one she is now taking. She turns, smiling in the shadows, to the gentleman beside her and nods.Then she spurs her horse to the north.
PART ONE
 
 
The Tudor Rose
1516-28
 
Chapter One
 
 
Daughter of England, Child of Spain
 
‘God send and give good life and long ... unto the excellent Princess Mary’.
 
Proclamation at Mary’s christening, 20 February 1516
 
S
he was the child who survived.The midwinter baby born in the small hours of Monday, 18 February 1516, was bonny enough to dispel any immediate fears for her survival. After a difficult labour, Katherine of Aragon, queen consort of England, must have dared to hope that her prayers for a healthy child had, at last, been answered. Katherine did not know that news of her father’s death had arrived in London only two days earlier; it was deliberately kept from her so that she could approach her delivery calmly.
In the seven years preceding the arrival of this daughter, Katherine had not produced the heir that either her father, Ferdinand of Aragon, or her husband expected of her. She had endured four miscarriages, one stillbirth and the death of an infant son who was not quite two months old. Seven years was a long time for England, a country so notoriously plagued by political upheaval and civil war, to be without an heir. This catalogue of failure had hit hard at the pride of HenryVIII’s Spanish wife. Her deep religious faith and the determination she inherited from her parents, Ferdinand and his formidable wife, Isabella of Castile, had taught Katherine how to endure. Nor was Henry her first husband; that had been the doomed Arthur, Prince of Wales, Henry VIII’s elder brother, who had left her a young widow in 1502. But in 1516 all the suffering of the past evaporated, at least temporarily, in the joyful realisation that she and Henry were, at last, parents.
The king’s undoubted relief was evident. And any regrets about the baby’s sex were disguised as optimism for the future.‘We are still young,’ Henry told the Venetian ambassador, whose mingled congratulations and commiserations on the birth of a daughter evidently pricked him.
1
He expressed his confidence that, with God’s will, sons would follow. But, at 31, Katherine was nearly six years older than her husband, and her gynaecological history was discouraging.What she privately thought of her chances we do not know but it was evident from the outset that she saw her daughter as England’s heir.
Katherine and Henry were well matched intellectually. They had both received the benefits of an education by the leading humanists of Europe, at a time when learning was considered an essential part of the preparation for leadership among royal families. Both were the children of royal houses that had teetered before establishing themselves and there was a distant bond of consanguinity, going back to the marriage of John of Gaunt with Constance of Castile.They had known each other since Henry was ten and Katherine 15, when he had escorted her down the aisle at her first wedding. But, in 1516, the fact that Katherine had been his dead brother’s wife was never mentioned.
Physically and temperamentally, however, the couple were completely different. Katherine had been a personable young woman, petite and slim. But years of pregnancies had now given her a figure that could optimistically be described as matronly. Her husband’s French rival, Francis I, ungallantly described her as old and deformed, by which he meant that she was fat. After the birth of her daughter, she grew even fatter. On state occasions, resplendent in cloth of gold or silver and weighed down by expensive stones, she certainly had all the trappings of a queen, even if she did resemble a stout jewellery chest. She had always been a pious woman and still kept Spanish priests in her household. No one minded. Londoners, in particular, loved Katherine and her devotion to religion in her daily life was greatly admired.
That Henry no longer found her attractive is not surprising. But he respected her and she was still a force in politics, especially foreign affairs. In the first years of his reign she guided him through the turbulent waters of international diplomacy, with the dual aim of supporting Spanish interests and shaping her young husband as a serious force in Europe. She was an effective and energetic regent during the Franco-Scottish wars of 1513. Henry probably knew what he owed her, though he may not have acknowledged it.Yet apart from a commitment to their regal responsibilities, they never had much in common. Henry’s main pastime was sport.A tall and imposing figure at this stage of his life, Henry was a prince in his prime, handsome, gallant, a king to admire and revere. Katherine adored him and would do so until the day she died. He gave every appearance (and the appearance may have been misleading) of preferring the field and the joust to government. His personal favourites were bear-like men of little brain, such as Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk, who had daringly married Henry’s sister, Mary, without royal permission. He got away with it, and they continued to wrestle and ride in the lists, to hunt and backslap and enjoy the physicality of life. And while Henry was pursuing boar and deer in southern England, Katherine visited shrines, made offerings and prayed. Religious tourism was common in the early 16th century and it was one of the queen’s major recreations. It also made her visible and popular.
Henry was an extrovert who loved music and public display. Katherine dutifully sat beside him and looked gracious, but her mind was increasingly elsewhere. Until 1516 she had played the role of consort with great aplomb, but her body had let her down. She could conceive easily but not bear healthy children. If she thought God was displeased, she kept her fears to herself and she turned, more and more, to religion. On that winter’s day in the red-brick palace of Greenwich, it seemed that her devotions had finally been rewarded. It is easy to imagine that she felt that, at last, she had succeeded.
The little princess was named Mary, after her aunt, the beautiful and feisty star of Henry’s court. Katherine and her sister-in-law were on very good terms and would remain so, but the queen was no doubt pleased at the choice of name for religious as well as family reasons. The child, small but pretty, already showed signs that she had inherited the red-gold hair of both her parents and the clear Tudor complexion. Few royal children can have been so longed for and so privileged. Her grandparents had been the foremost monarchs in Europe and her father was the epitome of a Renaissance prince. At the very least, she could expect to make an impressive marriage in Europe. If no son was born to Henry and Katherine, her future would be even grander. She would rule as England’s first sovereign queen.
This was a glorious prospect, but not necessarily an enviable one. Mary was born into a turbulent Europe, where even the great flowering of art, literature, music and thought that characterised the Renaissance could not disguise the harsh nature of political realities. The balance of power might change but warfare was not just endemic, it was a prized way of life for the aristocracy. Europeans faced an existence that, for most, was indeed brutal and short. Recurring bouts of pestilence swept over the continent, decimating populations often weakened by famine. In 1485, the year of the accession of Mary’s grandfather, Henry VII, England suffered its first outbreak of the sweating sickness, a type of virulent influenza that tended to be more prevalent in the warmer months. It struck swiftly and with frightening effect, killing seemingly healthy people in the space of 24 hours. By the time of Mary’s birth the sweat, as it was known, was well established as an annual hazard. Just as deadly as the spectre of disease were the vagaries of the weather. Drought and flood ruined harvests, bringing further misery, and even the rich and high born, with more mobility and better diets, could not be sure of survival. Henry VIII spent every summer evading sickness by moving around the south of England, keeping well clear of London. His success in this respect did not make him less of a hypochondriac.
2
In a Europe where life was so uncertain, the needs of the dead naturally occupied the minds of those who survived. The existence of God and the survival of the soul coloured the daily lives of everyone, from king to poorest peasant. Prayer was the means by which the living could intercede for departed loved ones, shortening their time in purgatory and eventually freeing them, it was hoped, from the torments of hell. These abstractions were absolute certainties for 16th-century people, for whom religion was as much a part of everyday existence as breathing and sleeping. But by the second decade of the century, there were many concerns about the role of the religious establishment that governed the earthly structure of religion. One minor aspect that would shortly acquire an unexpected significance was irritation at the idea that the soul could be speeded to its repose by the purchase of indulgences. This appealed to the gullible or just the plain lazy - prayer and Church ceremonial took up a lot of time - and it appealed to the Church’s accountants even more. Everywhere, the power of the Church was evident and resented. The early 16th-century popes ran an enormously wealthy - and equally worldly - business enterprise. The Vatican was a byword for double-dealing, promiscuity and greed. Even the most devout sadly recognised that Rome was full of bankers and whores. As war leaders, the popes stood shoulder to shoulder with the kings of Europe and were determined, wherever possible, to profit from the conflicts that they so happily embraced.

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