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Overview
Mary Tudor was the first woman to inherit the throne of England. Reigning through one of Britain’s stormiest eras, she earned the nickname “Bloody Mary” for her violent religious persecutions. She was born a princess, the daughter of Henry VIII and the Spanish Katherine of Aragon. Yet in the wake of Henry’s break with Rome, Mary, a devout Catholic, was declared illegitimate and was disinherited. She refused to accept her new status or to recognize Henry’s new wife, Anne Boleyn, as queen. She faced imprisonment and even death.
Mary successfully fought to reclaim her rightful place in the Tudor line, but her coronation would not end her struggles. She flouted fierce opposition in marrying Philip of Spain, sought to restore England to the Catholic faith, and burned hundreds of dissenters at the stake. But beneath her hard exterior was a woman whose private traumas of phantom pregnancies, debilitating illnesses, and unrequited love played out in the public glare of the fickle court. Though often overshadowed by her long-reigning sister, Elizabeth I, Mary Tudor was a complex figure of immense courage, determination, and humanity—and a political pioneer who proved that a woman could rule with all the power of her male predecessors.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780143128656 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Penguin Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 02/23/2016 |
| Pages: | 448 |
| Sales rank: | 651,125 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
PRINCESS OF ENGLAND
Mary, the daughter of king henry viii and katherine of Aragon, was born at four in the morning of Monday, February 18, 1516, at Placentia, the royal palace at Greenwich, on the banks of the Thames River in London. Three days later, the nobility of England gathered at the royal apartments to form a guard of honor as the baby emerged from the queen's chamber in the arms of Katherine's devoted friend and lady-in-waiting, Elizabeth Howard, countess of Surrey. Beneath a gold canopy held aloft by four knights of the realm, the infant was carried to the nearby Church of the Observant Friars.1 It was the day of Mary's baptism, her first rite of passage as a royal princess.
The procession of gentlemen, ladies, earls, and bishops paused at the door of the church, where, in a small arras-covered wooden archway, Mary was greeted by her godparents, blessed, and named after her aunt, Henry's favorite sister. The parade then filed two by two into the church, which had been specially adorned for the occasion.
Jewel-encrusted needlework hung from the walls; a font, brought from the priory of Christchurch Canterbury and used only for royal christenings, had been set on a raised and carpeted octagonal stage, with the accoutrements for the christening—basin, tapers, salt, and chrism—laid out on the high altar.2 After prayers were said and promises made, Mary was plunged three times into the font water, anointed with the holy oil, dried, and swaddled in her baptismal robe. As Te Deums were sung, she was taken up to the high altar and confirmed under the sponsorship of Margaret Pole, countess of Salisbury.3 Finally, with the rites concluded, her title was proclaimed to the sound of the heralds' trumpets:
God send and give long life and long unto the right high, right noble and excellent Princess Mary, Princess of England and daughter of our most dread sovereign lord the King's Highness.4 Despite the magnificent ceremony, the celebrations were muted. This was not the longed-for male heir, but a girl.
Six years earlier, in the Church of the Observant Friars, Henry had married his Spanish bride, Katherine of Aragon. Within weeks of the wedding, Katherine was pregnant and Henry wrote joyfully to his father-in-law, Ferdinand of Aragon, proclaiming the news: "Your daughter, her Serene Highness the Queen, our dearest consort, has conceived in her womb a living child and is right heavy therewith."5 Three months later, as England awaited the birth of its heir, Katherine miscarried. Yet the news was not made public, and with her belly still swollen, most likely with an infection, she was persuaded by her physician that she "remained pregnant of another child."6 A warrant was issued for the refurbishment of the royal nursery, and in March 1511 she withdrew to her apartments in advance of the birth.7
For weeks the court waited for news of the delivery, but labor did not come. As Katherine's confessor, Fray Diego, reported, "it has pleased our Lord to be her physician in such a way that the swelling decreased."8 There was no baby.
Luiz Caroz, the new Spanish ambassador, angrily condemned those who had maintained "that a menstruating woman was pregnant" and had made her "withdraw publicly for her delivery."9 Many councillors now feared that the queen was "incapable of conceiving."10 Fearing her father's displeasure, Katherine wrote to Ferdinand in late May, four months after the event, claiming that only "some days before" she had miscarried a daughter and failing to mention the subsequent false pregnancy. Do "not be angry," she begged him, "for it has been the will of God."11
Hope soon revived, and while writing letters of deceit to her father, Katherine discovered she was pregnant once more.12 Seven months later, on the morning of New Year's Day, bells rang out the news of the safe delivery of a royal baby. It was a living child and a son; England had its male heir. Celebrations engulfed the court and country, and five days later the child was christened and proclaimed "Prince Henry, first son of our sovereign lord, King Henry VIII." The king rode to the Shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham in Norfolk to give thanks and hold a splendid joust in his son's honor. But the celebrations were short-lived. Three weeks later Prince Henry died. It did not augur well. Over the next seven years, failed pregnancy followed failed pregnancy, each ending in miscarriage, stillbirth, or infant death.
So when in the spring of 1515 the thirty-one-year-old queen fell pregnant for the seventh time, there was a somewhat subdued response. This pregnancy, however, followed its natural course, and in the early weeks of the New Year the royal couple moved to the royal palace at Greenwich, where Henry had been born twenty-four years before and where preparations were now under way for the queen's confinement.
The Royal Book, the fifteenth-century book of court etiquette for all such royal events drawn up by Margaret Beaufort, Henry VIII's grandmother, outlined the necessary arrangements. The queen's chamber was to be turned into a tapestried cocoon, the floor covered with thickly laid carpet; the walls, ceiling, and windows hung with rich arras and one window left loosely covered to allow in air and light. The wall tapestries, the queen's canopied bed, and the bed hangings were to be of simple design, with figurative images avoided for fear of provoking dreams that might disturb mother and child.
There was to be a cupboard stacked with gold and silver plate to signify the queen's status, and crucifixes, candlesticks, images, and relics placed on an altar before which she could pray. At the foot of her canopied bed was placed a daybed, covered with a quilt of crimson satin and embroidered with the king and queen's arms, where the birth would take place.13
In late January, with all made ready, Katherine began the ceremony of "taking her chamber." First she went to the Chapel Royal to hear Mass; then, returning to the Presence Chamber, she sat beneath her cloth of estate—the mark of her rank—and took wines and spices with members of the court. Lord Mountjoy, her chamberlain, called on everyone to pray that "God would give her the good hour"—safe delivery—and the queen was accompanied to the door of her bedchamber in solemn procession. There the men departed, and Katherine entered the exclusively female world of childbirth. As The Royal Book stipulated, "All the ladies and gentlewomen to go in with her, and no man after to come in to the chamber save women, and women to be inside."14 She would not be in male company again until her "churching," the purification after labor, thirty days after the birth. Officers, butlers, and other servants would bring all manner of things to the chamber door, but there the women would receive them.
After days of seclusion and hushed expectancy, the February dawn was broken with bells ringing in the news: the queen had delivered a healthy baby, but a girl. Writing two days later, Sebastian Giustiniani, the Venetian ambassador, assured the doge and Senate that he would offer their congratulations but added that, had the baby been a son, "[he] should have already done so, as in that case, it would not have been fit to delay the compliment."15 Eventually, the ambassador sought an audience with King Henry and congratulated him "on the birth of his daughter, and on the wellbeing of her most serene mother Queen." The state would have been "yet more pleased," he added, "had the child been a son." Henry remained optimistic. "We are both young," he insisted; "if it was a daughter this time, by the grace of God, sons will follow."16
Table of Contents
Mary Tudos's Family Tree xv
Author's Note xvii
Introduction: Resurrection xix
Part 1 A King's Daughter
Chapter 1 Princess of England 3
Chapter 2 A True Friendship And Alliance 7
Chapter 3 Are You The Dauphin Of France? 13
Chapter 4 A Very Fine Young Cousin Indeed 16
Chapter 5 The Institution of a Christian Woman 21
Chapter 6 Great Signs and Tokens of Love 25
Chapter 7 Princess of Wales 28
Chapter 8 Pearl of the World 33
Chapter 9 This Sheer Calamity 36
Chapter 10 The King's Great Matter 43
Chapter 11 The Scandal of Christendom 48
Chapter 12 The Lady Mary 53
Chapter 13 Spanish Blood 58
Chapter 14 High Traitors 61
Chapter 15 Worse Than a Lion 65
Chapter 16 Suspicion of Poison 71
Chapter 17 The Ruin of the Concubine 76
Chapter 18 Most Humble and Obedient Daughter 83
Chapter 19 Incredible Rejoicing 91
Chapter 20 Deliverance of a Goodly Prince 96
Chapter 21 The Most Unhappy Lady in Christendom 100
Chapter 22 For Fear of Making a Ruffle in the World 106
Chapter 22 More a Friend than a Stepmother 111
Chapter 24 The Family of Henry VIII 117
Chapter 25 Departed This Life 122
Part 2 A King's Sister
Chapter 26 The King is Dead, Long Live the King 131
Chapter 27 Fantasy and New Fangleness 137
Chapter 28 Advice to be Conformable 143
Chapter 29 The Most Unstable Man in England 148
Chapter 30 What Say You, Mr Ambassador? 152
Chapter 31 An Unnatural Example 157
Chapter 32 Naughty Opinion 162
Chapter 33 Matters Touching My Soul 166
Chapter 34 My Device for the Succession 170
Chapter 35 Friends in the Briars 176
Chapter 36 True Owner of the Crown 179
Part 3 A Queen
Chapter 37 Marye the Quene 187
Chapter 38 The Joy of the People 191
Chapter 39 Clemency and Moderation 197
Chapter 40 Old Customs 204
Chapter 41 God Save Queen Mary 209
Chapter 42 Iniquitous Laws 212
Chapter 43 A Marrying Humor 217
Chapter 44 A Suitable Partner in Love 223
Chapter 45 A Traitorous Conspiracy 228
Chapter 46 Gibbets and Hanged Men 236
Chapter 47 Sole Queen 243
Chapter 48 Good Night, My Lords All 248
Part 4 A King's Wife
Chapter 49 With This Ring I Thee Wed 255
Chapter 50 Mutual Satisfaction 258
Chapter 51 The Happiest Couple in the World 262
Chapter 52 To Reconcile, Not To Condemn 268
Chapter 53 The Queen is with Child 273
Chapter 54 Her Majesty's Belly 277
Chapter 55 Blood and Fire 282
Chapter 56 Extraordinarily In Love 288
Chapter 57 Committed to the Flames 293
Chapter 58 A Great and Rare Example of Goodness 298
Chapter 59 Stout and Devilish Hearts 301
Chapter 60 Obedient Subject and Humble Sister 307
Chapter 61 A Warmed Over Honeymoon 311
Chapter 62 A Public Enemy to Ourselves 315
Chapter 63 The Grief of the Most Serene Queen 319
Chapter 64 Readiness for Change 323
Chapter 65 Thinking Myself to be With Child 326
Chapter 66 Reasonable Regret for Her Death 329
Epilogue: Veritas Temporis Filia 335
Acknowledgments 341
Notes 343
Select Bibliography 375
Index 385
Illustration Credits 401