2 For an evocative description of life in Tudor England, see Susan Brigden, New Worlds, Lost Worlds (London, 2000).
3 David Starkey, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII (London, 2004), p. 11.
4 Frederick Madden (ed.), Privy Purse Expenses of the Princess Mary (London, 1831), p. xx. Many writers have described the spoon as a gift from Gertrude Blount, wife of Princess Katherine’s son, Henry Courtenay. She did not, however, marry Courtenay until October 1519, so it would seem more likely that the ‘lady Devonshire’ referred to in the accounts is, in fact, Mary’s godmother herself.
16 Margaret Pole’s first period as lady governess lasted only about a year. She was replaced by a husband-and-wife team, Sir Philip and Lady Jane Calthorp. Sir Philip was brought in to manage Mary’s expanding household. His wife’s qualifications for her role are unknown.
Chapter 2 The Education of a Princess
1 The virginal was a small rectangular spinet without legs. It had only one wire per note and was often played in pairs.The regal was a kind of portable organ with one row of pipes.
2 See Garrett Mattingly, Katherine of Aragon (London, 1944), p. 154.
3 Mary’s cousin, Lady Jane Grey, gave the impression in her writings that she felt more affection for the household chaplains than she did for her parents.
5 Juan Luis Vives, The Education of a Christian Woman , ed. Charles Fantazzi (Chicago, 2000), p. 50.
6 Italian women humanists were in the forefront of Renaissance discussions of the education of women.The combination of literacy in Latin and familiarity with both classical and Christian texts informed their views.
7 Despite recurring fears that girls would lead men into sin, the illegitimacy rate in early 16th-century England was as low as 2 per cent. See Brigden, New Worlds , p. 63.
9 Quoted in Mattingly, Katherine of Aragon , p. 189.
10 Thornbury Castle still stands, the only surviving Tudor palace in England to be used as a hotel.
11 Though Henry VII had ensured that almost every Marcher lordship had been taken over by the Crown, it had not been an entirely one-way traffic. Most of the minor offices of his court were held by Welshmen. Henry VIII does not seem to have had much interest in the principality before deciding to send Mary there and did not feel inclined to pay it a visit in person. It has been pointed out that justice in Wales was not the disaster implied in the official statement and that there had been a council functioning there up to 1522. See Gwyn A Williams, When Was Wales ? (London, 1991), p. 117, and W. R. B. Robinson, ‘Princess Mary’s Itinerary in the Marches of Wales, 1525-27’, Historical Research , vol. 71 (1998).
12 Elizabeth Blount had married Gilbert Tailboys within three months of the birth of her son.The couple lived in Lincolnshire and subsequently had three children. After Tailboys’ death Elizabeth married Edward Fiennes de Clinton.There are indications in a letter of 1529 to Richmond’s tutor that she had more involvement in his upbringing than has generally been thought. See DNB entry for Elizabeth Blount.
13 Veysey seems to have been a competent administrator and he stayed on in Wales after Mary left, until Thomas Cromwell turned his attention to reorganising the principality in 1534. Cromwell removed him because he was not viewed as sufficiently tough on law and order.
14 Mary’s initial stay at Thornbury was less than three weeks. On 12 September 1525 she made a ceremonial entry into Gloucester and went from there to Tewkesbury, where she spent most of the autumn living in the abbey manor.
15 ‘The prayer of St Thomas of Aquinas, translated out of Latin into English by the most excellent Princess Mary … in the year of our Lord God 1527’, printed in Madden, Privy Purse Expenses , Appendix II, pp. clxxiii-clxxiv.
18 M. A. E. Wood (ed.), Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies (London, 1846), vol. ii, p. 32-3.
19 Cal SP Venetian, 4, p. 682, quoted in J. M. Stone, The History of Mary I, Queen of England (London, 1902), p. 46.
Chapter 3 The Queen and the Concubine
1 Quoted in Eric Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn (Oxford, 2005), p. 87.The precise dating of the letter is uncertain.
2 In fact, Francis was about to replace Françoise with an Anne of his own, Anne d’Heilly, later duchess of Etampes.
3 Henry’s role in the English Reformation remains the subject of dispute between scholars. For a major reinterpretation, see G.W. Bernard, The King’s Reformation (London, 2005).
5 It has been suggested that the origin of the antipathy between Mary Tudor and Anne Boleyn dated back to the brief period in which Anne served Mary as queen of France and in particular to the unseemly haste with which Mary married Charles Brandon. See Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn , p. 28.
10 Maria Dowling has noted that Katherine surprisingly failed to undertake a public relations campaign in English, despite her undoubted popularity. See M. Dowling, ‘Humanist Support for Katherine of Aragon’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research , 57 (1984), pp. 46-55.
1 L&P Henry VIII , 6, p. 238. It might be wondered why the father of Mary’s servant, Richard Wilbraham, was being knighted at such an advanced age.This was no belated recognition of services long since rendered, but a move by the king and his advisers to try to create as many knights as possible in order to tie a large part of the gentry to the increasingly radical political and religious programme.
15 This was an exaggeration, though it became an effective piece of propaganda. Katherine’s household at Buckden Palace in Cambridgeshire cost Henry VIII £ 3,000 a year. Mary, on the other hand, was compelled to petition her father for new clothes at this time.
20 Ibid., 7, p. 393. Mary found a less dramatic way of dealing with the same problem in late August, when her sister moved to Greenwich. She was allowed to ride on ahead and so got there before Elizabeth.
23 Castillon to Francis I, ibid., 7, Appendix, p. 13, and 8, p. 174.
24 The less attractive side of Thomas More, such as his enthusiasm for burning heretics, has been conveniently overlooked.
25 Quoted in Mattingly, Katherine of Aragon , pp. 344-5.
26 Chapuys heard that the child Anne lost was a boy. Other rumours said that the foetus was deformed. Neither of these hypotheses can be proved and they may have been invented by Anne’s enemies.
27 The portrait is in the Kunsthistoriches Museum,Vienna.