Mary Tudor (5 page)

After the vows were exchanged, Wolsey “placed on her finger a small ring in which a large diamond was set,” leaving to Bonnivet, the proxy groom, the symbolic task of slipping it down over the second joint.
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In spite of her young age, Mary did, it seems, know something
of the meaning of the occasion. “Are you the Dauphin of France?” she was reported to have said to Bonnivet. “If you are, I wish to kiss you.”
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With the ceremony finally concluded, the party moved to the chapel for a celebratory Mass followed by a sumptuous banquet. The dancing continued long into the night, many hours after the young bride-to-be had been put to bed.

As a condition of the marriage alliance, the French had insisted that Mary be recognized as her father’s heir. It was the first acknowledgment of her right to the throne.
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At the time it seemed a relatively insignificant concession. Katherine was pregnant, and Henry held out great hope for the imminent birth of a son. But once again, to the “vexation of everyone,”
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disappointment followed. On November 9, a month after the betrothal ceremonies, Katherine gave birth to a stillborn daughter. “Never had the kingdom desired anything so passionately as it had a prince,” Giustiniani wrote. “Perhaps had the event taken place before the conclusion of the betrothal, that event might not have come to pass; the sole fear of this kingdom, that it may pass through this marriage into the power of the French.”
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By the beginning of 1519, Princess Mary, betrothed to the French dauphin, was the sole heir to the throne of England.

I
N 1519, THE HABSBURG-VALOIS STRUGGLE FOR EUROPEAN DOMINANCE
imploded. Mary’s cousin, nineteen-year-old Charles of Spain and Burgundy, became Holy Roman Emperor following the death of his grandfather. He was now the most powerful ruler in Christendom, heir to the vast territories of Spain, Burgundy, and the Netherlands and huge swaths of Germany. England held the balance of power. Francis needed English friendship to prevent French encirclement; Charles wanted English money and ships to suppress the Comuneros revolt, which had broken out in Castile against his rule. Seeking to maximize his advantage, Henry negotiated with both sides. While rumors circulated of a proposed marriage between Mary and her cousin the Emperor Charles, Henry sought to reassure Francis of his commitment to the Anglo-French match.

On Saturday, May 26, 1520, shortly before Henry’s long-awaited meeting with the French king, Charles arrived in England on his way from Spain to the Low Countries. He landed at Dover and was conducted by Henry and Wolsey to Canterbury, where for the first time he met his aunt. Katherine “embraced him tenderly, not without tears.” Their reunion had been “her greatest desire in the world.”
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For three days, amid lavish entertainment, Charles sought to undermine the marriage alliance between his cousin Mary and the Valois prince. On the twenty-ninth, Henry and Katherine set sail for France accompanied by a retinue of six thousand Englishmen and -women.

For just over three weeks, a temporary town, the Camp du Drap d’Or, or Field of the Cloth of Gold, stood on a no-man’s-land between
the English-held town of Guisnes and French-held Ardres.
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Gold fountains flowed with claret; there were huge and elaborate pavilions and tents and a great temporary palace of classical design erected at the town’s entrance. Together the two kings jousted, feasted, and celebrated the entente reached two years before. It was a spectacular meeting of two young and physically powerful monarchs, whose rivalry was at once political and intensely personal. It was the greatest and most conspicuous display of wealth and culture that Europe had ever seen.

While her parents feasted in France, Mary became the focus of royal attention, holding court at Richmond Palace. Her nursery had been expanded to become a more “princely” household, reflecting her status—albeit reluctantly acknowledged—as the king’s sole heir. Head officers were appointed, and male servants, gentlemen, grooms, and valets were added to her original female staff. Lady Bryan was replaced as lady mistress by one of the most powerful and influential women in England: Mary’s godmother, Margaret Pole, the countess of Salisbury—one of Katherine’s most trusted and long-serving confidantes and a direct descendant of Edward IV’s brother, George, duke of Clarence. It proved to be an inspired choice. Mary became devoted to her new governess and came to think of her as a “second mother.”
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During this time privy councillors visited the young princess frequently and sent reports to her parents in France. As one letter explained, “We have sundry times visited and seen your dearest daughter the princess, who, God be thanked, is in prosperous health and convalescence; and like as she increaseth in days and years, so doth she in grace, wit and virtue.”
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Another of June 13, 1520, described Mary as “right merry … and daily exercising herself in virtuous pastimes and occupations.”
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As she was the betrothed wife of their dauphin, the French also monitored Mary’s health and development. Queen Claude, Francis’s wife, sent gifts of a jeweled cross “worth six thousand ducats” and a portrait of her son.
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Anxious to see that she was fit and well after a rumor of her death, Francis sent three gentlemen to visit Mary.
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On Saturday, June 30, the French delegation arrived by barge at Richmond and found Mary surrounded by a throng of lords, ladies, gentlemen, and gentlewomen, as befitted the heir to the throne and future queen
consort of France.
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As the envoys reported, she welcomed them “with most goodly countenance, proper communication and pleasant pastime in playing at the virginals, that they greatly marvelled and rejoiced the same, her young and tender age considered.”
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She was, of course, only four.

AFTER THE ANGLO-FRENCH
entertainments were concluded, Henry rode to meet Charles V at Gravelines, Flanders, and returned with him to Calais the following day to begin negotiations. Meanwhile, Francis had taken advantage of the Comuneros revolt in Spain to reconquer Spanish Navarre. The emperor appealed to Henry for help under the Treaty of London, which had provided against such acts of aggression, and asked that he repudiate the French match and now accept him as a suitor for Mary. But Henry was keen to maintain his advantage and, though agreeing not to make any fresh treaty with the French, was reluctant to commit fully to an alliance with the emperor.

By the following year, Charles had made extravagant promises to secure an alliance, and Henry promised to declare war on France if the fighting continued until November and to mount a joint invasion within two years.
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In these changed circumstances, Mary would be betrothed to her cousin the emperor.
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Mary was five; Charles was twenty-one. He would have to wait eight years for Mary to be of marriageable age. As Henry acknowledged to his envoy, Cuthbert Tunstall, bishop of Durham, their agreement would “not prevent the Emperor from marrying any woman of lawful age before our daughter comes to mature years, as he will only be bound to take her if he is then at liberty.” However, in order to win favorable terms from the emperor, “it is to be considered that she is now our sole heir and may succeed to the crown.”
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If Charles proved “intractable,” Tunstall was instructed to warn him of what was likely to happen if the alliance was not concluded and the French marriage went ahead:

With both France and Spain seeking an English alliance, Mary was at the very center of European affairs. Katherine particularly favored the continuation of the Anglo-Spanish alliance inaugurated by her own betrothal to Prince Arthur thirty years before. When Charles Poupet de Lachaulx, the imperial ambassador, visited England in March 1522, Katherine was anxious to display her daughter’s precocious abilities and would not let him leave until he had seen Mary dance. She “did not have to be asked twice” and performed with no hint of infant shyness, twirling “so prettily that no woman in the world could do better.” Mary then played the virginals and “two or three songs on the spinet” with impressive accomplishment. As Lachaulx reported to Charles, “Indeed, sire, she showed unbelievable grace and skill and such self-command as a woman of twenty might envy. She is pretty and very tall for her age, just turned seven and a very fine young cousin indeed.”
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It was exactly the response that Katherine had hoped for. Mary now chose Charles as her valentine and wore a golden brooch at her breast with “Charles” spelled out in jewels and owned another spelling out “the Emperour,” which appears pinned to her bodice in a portrait miniature by Lucas Horenbout.
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The marriage of her daughter to her nephew was a prospect that Katherine relished. As the imperial ambassador wrote to Charles, “her greatest desire, was to see you here and to receive you with the greatest honour and best cheer possible.”
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ON MAY 26, CHARLES
returned to England to celebrate the signing of the new treaty and his betrothal to Mary. He was met at Dover by Wolsey and a train of noblemen and conducted to Canterbury, where the king greeted him. Together they took the royal barge from Gravesend to Greenwich, arriving in the early evening. “At the hall door the Queen and the Princess and all the ladies received and
welcomed him … and the Emperor had great joy to see the Queen his Aunt and especially his young cousin germain the Lady Mary.”
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Mary was again expected to perform and impress. She danced and played the virginals once more and won the praise of all those who looked on. As one envoy reported, “she promises to become a handsome lady, although it is difficult to form an idea of her beauty as she is still so small.”
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Little over a week later, Charles was formally received into the City of London amid great pageantry. At London Bridge two giant figures of Samson and Hercules had been erected, and at Leadenhall, Italian merchants had constructed a genealogical tree showing their joint ancestry. The two monarchs then moved to Windsor, where for a month they jousted, hunted, and feasted before concluding a permanent treaty of peace and friendship that confirmed the Anglo-imperial match.
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Charles’s negotiators had at first insisted that Mary be delivered to them the following year so that she could be trained as a lady of the imperial court, but Wolsey had resisted. Mary would not go to the Habsburg court in Brussels until she was twelve, the lawful age of cohabitation, when she would become Charles’s consort.
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This fact was to dominate the next four years of her life. She was to be transformed as rapidly as possible into a Spanish lady, to be dressed “according to the fashion and manner of those parts,” trained in Spanish customs and politeness, and educated in a suitable manner.
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