Mary Tudor (22 page)

ON JULY
12, 1543, Mary and Elizabeth attended their father’s sixth wedding, in the queen’s Privy Closet at Hampton Court. As Thomas Wriothesley, secretary of the Privy Council, reported to the duke of Suffolk:

It was a small ceremony with some twenty people in attendance, presided over by Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester.
¹⁹
Henry’s bride, the twice-married Katherine Parr, a former member of Mary’s household, had come to the king’s attention during Mary’s frequent visits to court. Katherine had long-standing connections with the princess. Her mother, Maud, had been one of Katherine of Aragon’s ladies-in-waiting, and she had been named after the queen, who had stood as godmother at her baptism. It was soon apparent that Katherine Parr, only four years older than Mary, was to be “more a friend than a stepmother.” She sought to improve relations between Mary and her father, and soon Chapuys was reporting, “The King continues to treat her [Mary] kindly, and has made her stay with the new Queen, who
behaves affectionately towards her.”
²⁰
Mary and Katherine were both learned women, and, despite Katherine’s evangelical sympathies, they enjoyed a close relationship and studied together.

In 1544, under Katherine Parr’s influence, Mary took up the translation of
Erasmus’s Paraphrases on the Four Gospels
. The scholar Nicholas Udall was the editor of the book; Katherine funded its publication, and Mary was one of the translators. Ill health prevented Mary from finishing work on the book, and her chaplain, Francis Mallet, eventually completed it. In a letter of September 20, Katherine inquired as to whether Mary wished it “to go forth to the world (most auspiciously) under your name, or as the production of an unknown writer?” adding, “You will, in my opinion, do a real injury if you refuse to let it go down to posterity under the auspices of your own name, since you have undertaken so much labour in accurately translating it for the great good of the public and would have undertaken still greater (as is well known) if the health of your body had permitted.” She continued, “I do not see why you should repudiate that praise which all men justly confer on you.”
²¹
In his preface to the
Paraphrases
, Udall paid tribute to “the most noble, the virtuous, the most witty, and the most studious Lady Mary’s grace,” calling her “a peerless flower of virginity.”
²²

Based at court, Mary thrived in the favor of an intelligent and benevolent queen. When in February 1544 a ball was held during the visit of the Spanish grandee the duke of Nájera, Mary danced elegantly, dressed extravagantly in a gown of gold cloth under a robe of violet velvet with a coronal of large precious stones on her head. As Nájera described her:

Despite being twenty years younger than Mary, Edward was fiercely protective of his elder sister. Writing to his stepmother, the six-year-old urged her to keep a careful eye on the princess: “preserve her, therefore, I pray you, my dear sister Mary,” from all the “wiles and enchantments of the evil one” and “beseech her to attend no longer to foreign dances and merriments which do not become a most Christian princess.”
²⁴
At the same time he praised Mary, telling her, “I like you even as a brother ought to like a very dear sister, who hath within herself all the embellishments of virtue and honourable station.” In the same way that he “loved his best clothes most of all, though he seldom wore them,” he explained, “so he wrote seldom to her, but loved her most.”
²⁵

I
N FEBRUARY 1544, PARLIAMENT PASSED A NEW AND RADICAL ACT
of Succession. The previous law, passed in 1536 following Henry’s marriage to Jane Seymour, had bastardized both Mary and Elizabeth and settled the succession on any son born of Seymour or “by any other lawful wife.”
²
Yet now, as Henry visibly aged and the six-year-old Edward remained his sole heir, a real uncertainty hung over the Tudor succession. As the new act declared, “It standeth in the only pleasure and will of Almighty God whether the King’s Majesty shall have any heirs begotten and procreated between his Highness and his … most entirely beloved wife Queen Katherine” or whether “the said Prince Edward shall have issue of his body lawfully begotten.”
³
Although still regarded as illegitimate, Mary, and then Elizabeth, were placed in the line of succession after Edward and his heirs.

On June 26, the royal children came together with their father at Whitehall for a lavish reception—a
voyde
—at which wine and sweetmeats were served. It was the first public outing of the reconciled royal family.
⁴
The reunion was commemorated in the portrait known as
The Family of Henry VIII
, painted by an unknown artist. The picture is dominated by Henry, sitting on his throne between his son and heir, the six-year-old Prince Edward, and, to emphasize the line of dynastic succession, Edward’s mother, the long-since-dead Jane Seymour. On the left stands Mary, on the right Elizabeth. Both are dressed similarly, with Mary distinguishable only by being the taller sister. Despite having played a part in brokering the reconciliation between Henry and his children, Katherine Parr is omitted from the scene. This was more than just a family portrait, however; it was to commemorate the political settlement enshrined in the Act of Succession. This was the Tudor family as Henry had decreed it: the king’s heirs in degree of precedence. It would shape the English monarchy for the rest of the century.

WITH THE SUCCESSION
settled, Henry looked to recapture the glories of his youth by going to war with France. The emperor and the French king had resumed hostilities, and both sovereigns once again began to compete for Henry’s favor. Chapuys reported that the French “now almost offer the English carte blanche for an alliance,” and he advised that England must, at whatever cost, be secured for the imperial interest.
⁵
Henry would indeed make a secret treaty with the emperor, in February 1543, that provided for a joint invasion of France within two years.

But Henry first needed to secure the northern border by mounting a campaign against Scotland. At Solway Moss in November 1542, the English inflicted a humiliating defeat on the Scots. Three weeks later King James V died, leaving the kingdom to his week-old daughter, Mary. Henry then sought to subdue Scotland in advance of his invasion in France, and in July 1543 a treaty of peace and dynastic union was signed at Greenwich with Prince Edward betrothed to Mary, queen of Scots.
⁶
But within five months, the entente had broken down as the Scots reaffirmed their alliance with the French.

Preparations were now made for war on two fronts: with Scotland
and with France. While the emperor sought to make Francis relinquish his claim to Milan and support the German princes, Henry looked to force him to abandon the cause of Scottish independence. In May 1544, 14,000 troops were sent to Scotland, and a month later, an English force of some 40,000 men invaded France. On July 11, Henry, despite his greatly expanded girth and swollen, ulcerated legs, left Whitehall for France.
⁷
In his absence, Katherine Parr was appointed regent of England, to rule the country in the name of the king as Katherine of Aragon had done some thirty years before. She managed the five-man council that Henry had appointed to assist her and oversaw the supply of men and money for the war. Writing to Henry’s council, Katherine adopted the full royal style: “Right trusty and right well-beloved cousins, we greet you well.” She signed herself “Katherine the Queen.” In letters to Henry she used the submissive tone of a royal wife “by your majesty’s humble obedient servant.”
⁸
She was a model of wifely queenship.

As Katherine governed from Hampton Court, Mary was with her, and later Edward and Elizabeth too. Both stepdaughters witnessed a woman governing and imposing her authority on her male councillors. It would prove formative for both.

ON JULY 14, HENRY
arrived in Calais, ready for the planned siege of Boulogne, which began five days later. After weeks of laying siege, the Council wrote to Katherine on August 4, informing her that “Yesterday, the battery began, and goes lustily forward, and the walls begin to tumble apace.” They anticipated that Boulogne must fall shortly.
⁹
Six weeks later, the town surrendered and Henry entered in triumph. Yet on the same day the emperor, who sought to concentrate his efforts on Germany, had concluded a treaty with the French at Crépy and abandoned England. Henry was left to fight Francis alone. The French king now pledged “to win as much as the Englishmen had on this side of the sea,” to capture a town on England’s southeast coast that could be exchanged for Boulogne, and to send troops into Scotland for an invasion of the north.