Mary Tudor (4 page)
Authors: Linda Porter
The princess’s household seems to have been a functioning unit within days of her birth. As well as the nursery staff and the lady governess there was a treasurer to manage finances, a chaplain and a gentlewoman. Mary’s expenses soon began to grow. In the six months between October 1517 and March 1518 they stood at £421.12
s
1
d
. By 1519/20 they had risen to £1,100, about £400,000 today.
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Not until her father’s death in 1547 would Mary actually have any income of her own, but she grew up as the focus of a substantial business unit, whose members had considerable responsibilities as well as privileges.
s
1
d
. By 1519/20 they had risen to £1,100, about £400,000 today.
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Not until her father’s death in 1547 would Mary actually have any income of her own, but she grew up as the focus of a substantial business unit, whose members had considerable responsibilities as well as privileges.
But it was also something more than a royal institution in its own right. Mary’s household was, in a very real sense, her family. Katherine of Aragon conceived once more after Mary’s birth, in 1518, but the child was another girl and we do not even know whether it was born dead or succumbed shortly after birth. From this point onwards, it was an accepted fact that Mary was her father’s only legitimate child, and, therefore, his heir. The chagrin Katherine must have felt when Henry’s mistress, Elizabeth Blount, gave birth to a son in 1519 did not cause her to fear for her daughter. Later, young Henry Fitzroy’s position in respect of his half-sister was less clear-cut, though never in Katherine’s mind.
Mary grew up surrounded by a staff who may well have had some degree of self-interest in maintaining their employment but who seemed to have held her in genuine affection.This early ability to inspire loyalty and love in those who served her remained a constant throughout Mary’s life and she was always solicitous of her servants’ welfare. Although she was a little girl in an adult world, her life was not necessarily devoid of amusement. A later fixture in Mary’s life was her fool, Jane Cooper, one of the few female examples we have of a role that was generally given to men. The two seem to have had a close relationship, with Mary meeting Jane’s expenses for haircuts and illness. Fools were not just entertainers, they were something of an emotional safety valve. It is probable that as a child Mary enjoyed the antics of her father’s court jesters, even if there was no fool officially attached to her household.
There are no records of Mary having contact with other children or being educated with them, unlike her siblings Elizabeth and Edward two decades later.This is not conclusive proof that she grew up in complete isolation, and it is possible that she knew the daughters of her aunt Mary. Her earliest relationship, if it can be called that, with another child came in 1517, when she was named as godmother for her cousin, Frances Brandon, daughter of Mary Tudor and Charles Brandon. As young women in their teens, the cousins spent considerable amounts of time in each other’s company. It may be that they saw each other occasionally when younger. Fate would strain their relationship to the limits, but not, finally, undermine it.
Mary’s life was always peripatetic; she had no fixed abode. From her earliest days she moved from palace to palace, more in the summer than the winter, frequently close to her parents but not often staying with them. Most of her summer residences as a very small child were in the western Home Counties, where her father loved to hunt. In general, things were arranged so that Katherine could visit easily whenever she chose. But it was not her mother who saw the baby Mary from early childhood into womanhood.That responsibility lay with the countess of Salisbury, who was the main direct influence on the princess in the formative years of her life. It was a close and affectionate relationship that Mary never forgot, even when anguish and then death parted her from the woman who had raised her.
The countess had assumed the role of lady governess by May 1520, when Mary was four years old. Her appointment seems to have been at the express wish of the queen, who counted Margaret Pole among her closest friends. Margaret’s son, Reginald, a key figure in Mary’s reign, claimed that Katherine had been so keen for Margaret to take on the role of lady governess that she had been willing to go to his mother’s house in person with Henry to implore her to take on the burden.
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This does not seem to have been necessary. Margaret Pole knew her duty and was devoted to the queen.They had known each other since Katherine first came to England. Margaret’s late husband, Richard Pole, had been Prince Arthur’s Lord Chamberlain, and she had accompanied him to Wales during the brief five-month marriage of Katherine and her first husband. There a bond seems to have been forged between the two women, despite the fact that Katherine spoke little English and was 12 years younger than Margaret. Arthur’s premature death at Ludlow parted them, but they continued to correspond until Henry VIII’s accession rescued Katherine from penurious widowhood and made her the queen consort she had always expected to be. Margaret had also known financial distress during this period (her husband died in 1504), but her loyalty and friendship were not forgotten. She came to court with her eldest son to attend Katherine’s coronation and was soon appointed one of the queen’s chief attendants. In 1512, possibly at his wife’s behest, Henry VIII granted Margaret’s petition for restoration of the earldom of Salisbury and she became a countess in her own right.
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This made her one of the most influential and powerful women in England. Her estates covered 17 counties as well as land in Wales, the Isle of Wight and Calais. It has been estimated that this placed her among the top five wealthiest nobles in early 16th-century England. She had four main residences in the south of England, one of which, Bisham in Berkshire, was sometimes used as a summer residence for Mary when she was a baby. Margaret’s London house, Le Herber, stood on the site of what is now Cannon Street station.
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This does not seem to have been necessary. Margaret Pole knew her duty and was devoted to the queen.They had known each other since Katherine first came to England. Margaret’s late husband, Richard Pole, had been Prince Arthur’s Lord Chamberlain, and she had accompanied him to Wales during the brief five-month marriage of Katherine and her first husband. There a bond seems to have been forged between the two women, despite the fact that Katherine spoke little English and was 12 years younger than Margaret. Arthur’s premature death at Ludlow parted them, but they continued to correspond until Henry VIII’s accession rescued Katherine from penurious widowhood and made her the queen consort she had always expected to be. Margaret had also known financial distress during this period (her husband died in 1504), but her loyalty and friendship were not forgotten. She came to court with her eldest son to attend Katherine’s coronation and was soon appointed one of the queen’s chief attendants. In 1512, possibly at his wife’s behest, Henry VIII granted Margaret’s petition for restoration of the earldom of Salisbury and she became a countess in her own right.
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This made her one of the most influential and powerful women in England. Her estates covered 17 counties as well as land in Wales, the Isle of Wight and Calais. It has been estimated that this placed her among the top five wealthiest nobles in early 16th-century England. She had four main residences in the south of England, one of which, Bisham in Berkshire, was sometimes used as a summer residence for Mary when she was a baby. Margaret’s London house, Le Herber, stood on the site of what is now Cannon Street station.
Mary’s lady governess was one of the foremost women of the realm, an entirely fitting choice for a difficult task. But, as the daughter of the disgraced duke of Clarence, she had grown up in perilous times, well aware of the dangers of proximity to the throne.The countess had much experience, even if it was indirect, of violence and intrigue. Her father was murdered on the orders of his brother, Edward IV, in 1478. He had also fallen out with his younger brother, the future Richard III. His demise left the five-year-old Margaret and her younger brother, the earl of Warwick, as the orphaned children of a traitor. Edward IV made them his wards but their future hung in the balance when he died. They certainly presented a threat to Richard III, because they could not be declared illegitimate like Edward’s own sons.The children may well have escaped a similar fate to that which befell the princes in the Tower of London. Instead, they were sent north to Yorkshire. Henry VII placed Margaret and her brother in his mother’s household on his accession and they returned to court. Margaret was married probably the following year to Richard Pole. She was a very young bride but the marriage seems to have been happy and gave Margaret security and stability, both of which had been lacking in her life until then. Her approach to the job of bringing up Princess Mary demonstrated how much she valued those aspects of her life. She certainly fared better than her brother, who was put in the Tower of London and later executed when he tried to escape with the pretender Perkin Warbeck.
When the countess of Salisbury entered Mary’s life she was 47 years old and still an imposing woman. ‘Tall, thin and elegant, she boasted the auburn hair of the Plantagenets and the pale skin which accompanied such colouring.’
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She had five children of her own, including one daughter, Ursula, and she was intelligent, virtuous and pious. No stain attached to her person or behaviour and she had the considerable advantage of knowing the court and its etiquette inside out. A better choice for Mary’s welfare or role as a princess could not have been made.
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She had five children of her own, including one daughter, Ursula, and she was intelligent, virtuous and pious. No stain attached to her person or behaviour and she had the considerable advantage of knowing the court and its etiquette inside out. A better choice for Mary’s welfare or role as a princess could not have been made.
Her influence appears to have been quickly established. On 13 June 1520, the Lords of the Council wrote to Henry, who was in France with Katherine to attend that ostentatious display of one-upmanship between himself and Francis I known as the Field of Cloth of Gold, that Mary was ‘daily exercising herself in virtuous pastimes and occupations …’
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This was, of course, to be expected. No parent, and certainly not a king, wants to hear that his child is misbehaving, and playtime was probably not a 16th-century concept. But this does not mean that Mary was always treated as a miniature adult.The pattern of her year changed with the seasons, but the main excitement came at Christmas. Then the countess of Salisbury and other members of the princess’s entourage made sure that there was plenty to entertain a little girl.
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This was, of course, to be expected. No parent, and certainly not a king, wants to hear that his child is misbehaving, and playtime was probably not a 16th-century concept. But this does not mean that Mary was always treated as a miniature adult.The pattern of her year changed with the seasons, but the main excitement came at Christmas. Then the countess of Salisbury and other members of the princess’s entourage made sure that there was plenty to entertain a little girl.
The household accounts give us a glimpse of the type of Christmas that Mary experienced. It is a far cry from the Germanic Christmases that were introduced into Victorian England and seems closer to a medieval celebration. But it was lively and very visual. The content did not differ greatly over time, but Mary may well have found such familiarity enjoyable as she grew older. In 1521 there was a Lord of Misrule, a kind of master of ceremonies, to lead Mary’s festive entertainment. He was one of Mary’s valets, John Thurgoode. Three boars,‘furious and fell’, were purchased for the proceedings and the highlight was the ceremonial introduction of the boar’s head,‘crown’d with gay garlands and with rosemary, smoak’d on the Christmas board’. The boar’s head was an impressive sight, and painters and decorators were brought in to gild and decorate it.
Thurgoode was paid 40 shillings (around £700) for the costumes and entertainments he devised that Christmas.These involved a considerable number of players and props and a lot of activity and noise.There were two tabourets, a man who played the Friar and one who played the Shipman, a stock of visors, coat-armour, gold foil and coney-skins and tails for mummers. It is not clear precisely how these were used but there appear to have been a succession of tableaux or short plays. As well as the Shipman and the Friar, Thurgoode ordered four dozen ‘clattering staves’, two dozen morris pikes, 12 crossbows, gunpowder, four gunners, ten dozen bells, a hobby horse and enough straw ‘to cover twelve men in a disguising’. Finally, in what seems to a modern reader a distressingly heartless role, there was ‘a man to kill a calf behind a cloth’.
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There is every reason to suppose that Mary liked these raucous interludes. She loved such entertainments when she grew up and they figured significantly at her own court. She probably found them, as did her contemporaries, amusing and diverting. Her father was an inveterate japester who loved the old chivalric tradition of surprise and disguise. It is not hard to imagine the young princess laughing out loud at the comic antics played before her. So much of her life as a child seems to the modern eye to have been serious and dutiful, but it was not without times of relief and pleasure. Music became an early and abiding pastime and her delight in it was something she shared with her father. It may have been the earliest part of her education, and her precocious enthusiasm was noted when she was just two years old. On one of her visits to court she heard the Venetian organist, Dionysius Memo, playing for her father’s guests and ran after him calling, ‘Priest, priest!’, not because she was interested in his religious role but to encourage him to play more.
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Henry was proudly indulgent of this slight lapse in his child’s otherwise dignified behaviour. Her taste he could not fault, since it had been Henry himself who brought Memo, the organist of St Mark’s, to England not long after Mary’s birth. Memo would give concerts after dinner, sometimes lasting up to four hours,‘to the incredible admiration and pleasure of everybody’. It seems likely that he was Mary’s first music teacher. No young princess could have had finer.
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Henry was proudly indulgent of this slight lapse in his child’s otherwise dignified behaviour. Her taste he could not fault, since it had been Henry himself who brought Memo, the organist of St Mark’s, to England not long after Mary’s birth. Memo would give concerts after dinner, sometimes lasting up to four hours,‘to the incredible admiration and pleasure of everybody’. It seems likely that he was Mary’s first music teacher. No young princess could have had finer.
The combination of lighter pastimes with an orderly existence would not in any way have deflected the countess of Salisbury’s prime objective, which was to prepare her charge for the life of an English princess and a European queen. For even if there were, in the future, to be a male heir to Henry VIII, Mary’s potential on the European marriage market was scarcely diminished. Henry always wanted a son, but now he had a daughter he was determined to use her as a diplomatic tool, early and often. This was not heartless, it was just good international relations. Accustomed to command from the moment she acquired speech, Mary found out not long afterwards that there would always be a string of suitors for her hand and that her appearances at court would often coincide with some new marriage negotiation. By the time she became queen, there had been so many suitors and betrothals that it seems unlikely that she could have kept track of them all herself.
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