“[she] changes every day”; Mary Tudor and fashion

(To see this post with original footnotes and with some images, I have created a pdf document which you can read here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/30947190/She)


For many, the sixteenth-century French hood is deeply associated with Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII. Political allegiances are seen to have been displayed in the way in which individuals of status dressed. Thus the pro-French Anne, whom also spent considerable time in that country, adopted French fashion. Her predecessor and rival, Jane Seymour, is associated with English dress. To reinforce this perception further, in 1537 Lady Lisle attempted to gain a place for one of her daughters in Jane’s household. She succeeded in gaining a place for daughter Anne, but was told that the queen had commanded she lose ‘her French apparel’. Jane, it can be argued, was removing all traces of her predecessor and propagating herself as a modest woman who dressed in the more conservative English fashion than the supposedly bawdy French style.

Yet how distinctively separate were French and English styles viewed by contemporaries? Was English style really conservative? Did those women who espoused it purposely do so to portray themselves as modest women – even as conservatives in religion? And were figures like Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour really that rigid in their dress sense? Could not women adopt English, French, and indeed other continental fashions, because they simply liked the style; because such styles were becoming fashionable elsewhere?

What about Mary Tudor? By looking at her dress sense we can develop some idea of contemporary taste and whether individuals did endorse clothing for political effect or just because the items in question were fashionable at the time.



Mary adored clothes and jewels. During her years of disgrace (1533-1536), a number of her fine gowns and jewels were taken away in punishment over her refusal to recognise her new demoted status. She complained bitterly and was reduced, the imperial ambassador claims, to ‘send[ing] a gentleman to the King, her father, begging him to provide her with the necessary articles.’ Her subsequent vast expenditure on clothes, namely as queen, was in some respects a way of compensating for that experience. Yet there was also a sense of sheer joy in fashion. In 1554 the Venetian ambassador remarked that Mary 'seems to delight above all in arraying herself elegantly and magnificently.’ She ‘changes every day’. In the later years of her father’s reign, when she was back in favour, she would pay great attention to her inventory of jewels. We find her hand in the inventory of 1542-46, carefully documenting all the items bestowed upon her. The pleasure was not only in receiving. Mary indulged in the customary practise of awarding articles of jewellery and clothing as gifts. One ‘grene Tablet garneshed wt golde hauyng the Picture of the trinite in it’ was given to ‘my laday Elizabeth grace’, her half-sister, whilst she granted one Mistress Ryder a ‘rounde tablet blacke enamelled wt the Kings Picture and quene Janes [Seymour]’ on the occasion of this woman’s marriage. Philip also received gifts of clothing from his wife. For their wedding, Philip wore a mantle of gold cloth that Mary had given him. The mantle was set with numerous precious stones.


Evidently Mary inherited her predecessor’s gowns and jewels. This is remarked upon by the Venetian ambassador:

‘She also makes great use of jewels, wearing them both on her chapron and round her neck, and as trimming for her gowns; in which jewels she delights greatly, and although she has a great plenty of them left by her predecessors, yet were she better supplied with money than she is, she would doubtlessly buy many more”.


Given that Mary was already spending a pretty sum on her wardrobe, her desire to spend more indicates the great desire she had to look good.


What type of styles, materials and colours did Mary prefer? Fortunately there exists an excellent study that provides insight into this. Alison Carter, who wrote her MA thesis on Mary’s wardrobe, observes that her accounts as queen reveal huge quantities of velvet and satin. Velvet was the most expensive and Mary frequently called for ‘Jean Duplic’ and ‘Lukes’. ‘Jean Duplic’ was possibly doubled-pilled velvet from Genoa, and ‘Lukes’ was rich velvet from Lucca, Italy. We know that Anne Boleyn had ordered shoes made of this black Genoa velvet. There also appears to be large quantities of crimson and purple velvets ordered for Mary. She also favoured black, again like Anne Boleyn. Alexander Samson remarks that we see ‘a discernable shift from the crimson and murrey dyes popular in 1554 to russet shades by 1557’ throughout her reign. Clearly Mary took notice of contemporary trends.



In the portrait of Mary by ‘Master John’ dated to c.1544 - a portrait which she commissioned – she is depicted in a gown of the French style. As Carter notes,
‘Its characteristics were square neckline, tight-fitting bodice, trained skirt, which from the 1530s had an inverted V opening at centre front, and wide oversleeves worn with ‘false’ foresleeves’.

Though Mary is depicted in the c.1544 portrait wearing this, they first actual reference to a ‘ffrenche gowne’ in her accounts dates to 1546. However five gowns mentioned in accounts of 1538 may have also been in the same style. By 1540 Mary also stops wearing the gable hood; she purchases her last one in January of that year.


For Carter, the ‘grandeur of the French gown lent itself to the rather conservative taste of the English court and more or less fossilized there long after it had passed out of fashionable French dress’. Of course what was considered conservative in England was not necessarily shared elsewhere. Clearly certain Spanish visitors during Mary’s reign did not perceive English women to dress or behave modestly. Furthermore one contemporary remarked that Mary was a saint who dressed very badly, the implication that she overdid it with the grandeur.


As queen Mary took to wearing two sorts of garments – gowns in the French fashion, like before, and looser fitting gowns (she did wear a gown of this type during the period of mourning for her father but starts wearing these more frequently as queen). In 1554 the Venetian ambassador observed that she often wore, ‘a gown such as men wear, but fitting very close, with an under-petticoat which has a very long train; and this is her ordinary costume, being also that of the gentlewomen in England’. The gowns could be fastened at the front. As Alexander Samson summarises, the use of such gowns may have coincided with the period in which she believed herself to be pregnant:

‘This new style was increasingly favoured by Mary, possibly as a result of her phantom pregnancy, the absence of a stomacher making it a more comfortable garment for a woman with a distended abdomen. She was described on the 27th November 1554, appearing at Whitehall: "in the chamber of presence... the Quene sat highest, rychly aparelid, and her belly laid out, that all men might see that she was with child. At this parliament they did laboure was made to haue the kyng crowned and some thought that the Quene for that cause, dyd lay out her belly the more. On the right hand of the Quene sat the king"’.



What was Mary attempting to do with her style of dress? Was she intended to propagate her religious and political sympathies, or just adopting the fashion of the time?


Carter argues that Mary pioneered the ‘Gloriana image’ associated with her predecessor and half-sister, Elizabeth I. ‘Mary was, I believe, a supreme and yet generally unacknowledged exponent of that image, able to dress with the utmost sumptuosity and yet propriety, with a “taste for dress” as Beatrice White perceptively comments “that never degenerated into the baroque or ridiculous”. Mary dressed to impress, and found enjoyment in this. Recently Susan James has argued that Mary lacked any particularly interest in art itself, but was interested in using it for political means. If that was the case, and I think this needs to be questioned, fashion was regarded in a much different light. It was far more ‘personal’ and meaningful to her.


This enjoyment in fashion extended to Mary’s numerous stepmothers, Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour included. Jane may have worn the English gable hood, indicated in portraits of her, but there is the possibility that she adopted other headdresses. As her wardrobe accounts as queen are limited, and in fact don’t mention gable hoods at all though we know she must have worn them, we cannot determine with precision that she only wore certain styles of dress. Clearly Jane, like her stepdaughter and her predecessor Anne Boleyn, adored sumptuous materials; she owned numerous gowns and tended to favour tawny, crimson and yellow. As queen Jane readily accepted the jewels and garments of her predecessors. She may have attempted to control what her maids like Anne Basset were wearing, but she could not deter the popularity of French dress in England. She inherited Anne Boleyn’s gowns and jewels and did so gladly, just as Mary, throughout the rest of Henry’s reign and upon her own accession to the throne, inherited the goods of her predecessors. Ultimately Mary went with the fashion. And if the fashion was for French, then she would acquire that style.


What happened though when Mary went to war with France as queen? Would not the wearing of French influenced attire be inappropriate? Alison Carter identifies Philip’s arrival in England with the subsequent popularity of facets of Spanish dress. Spanish styles had, she argues, been incorporated into the few festive displays held at Mary and Philip’s court and this had an impact on its popularity amongst the nobility. Contemporaries remarked that before Philip’s arrival, male dress in England was influenced by the Italian style; after it became more Spanish. Mary too, and her women, were influenced by Spanish dress; her gowns become, Carter states, ‘remarkably similar in style and decoration under a unifying European, but predominately Spanish influence’. Carter portrays Mary as a woman frequently incorporating the most fashionable styles in her own dress, thus she did not move away entirely from French styles. The move to Spanish dress is evident yet predates England’s declaration of war on France in 1557. What dispels the notion that Mary was motivated particularly by political events in her style of dress is that fact that in 1558 she orders seven French kirtles for loose gowns.



A few months after her death, several of Jane Seymour’s ladies returned to wearing the French hood. It was after all the fashion; gable hoods were becoming terribly outdated. Like these women, Mary was aware of current trends and wished to display herself as befitting her status. Mary may have been the monarch’s illegitimate daughter, specifically verified as so in the 1536 Act of Succession, and was for eight following years not included in the succession, but she was nonetheless a leading lady at court and the daughter of the monarch. She dressed well and understood the importance of dressing to impressive. Mary was first lady at court during the rare occasions that her father was without a queen. Did she perhaps take this time to further her knowledge on public presentation? Possibly and this would have been no hardship. For Mary, looking good was a pleasure and a duty.

A short critique of G.W. Bernard’s views on Anne Boleyn and Mary’s relationship

Two days ago my copy of G.W. Bernard, Anne Boleyn: Fatal Attractions (New Haven and London, 2010) finally arrived. Taking advantage of the pleasant change in weather, I decided to read it in Greenwich Park situated near the former palace where Anne, according to Bernard, got up to a lot of extramarital fun. I could write at some length on the study, which I have mixed views about, but this is a blog on Mary and arguably not the place for such a review. But there is one chapter I do wish to discuss and I promise it specifically concerns Mary. The chapter in question, '6. She ‘wore yellow for the mourning’: Anne against Catherine’ (pp. 79-91) deals with Anne Boleyn’s relationship, or more precisely treatment of, Katherine of Aragon and her daughter. I’m going to be more specific here and try to overlook the discussion regarding Anne’s treatment with Katherine in order to observe Bernard’s views of Anne and Mary’s relationship. This is not difficult given that the chapter tends to favour this issue above Katherine’s treatment.


Firstly, I applaud Bernard for being one of the few current historians to actually make the trip to Vienna to consult the original dispatches of Eustace Chapuys and others kept at the Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv. Bernard has evidently been diligent in his research.



What then of his comments regarding Anne and Mary’s relationship. According to Bernard, Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII probably encouraged one another in their poor treatment of his former wife and daughter. Mary was always a threat to Anne. Her insistence on her own legitimacy obviously challenged the legitimacy of Anne’s marriage and her daughter’s right as heir to the throne. If Anne berated the girl – if she threatened to have her physically admonished, even threatening her with death – this cannot be seen as a product of pure maliciousness. Behind all such threats was fear and a defensive position. If Anne, Bernard summarises, threatened the girl, ‘it is easy to understand why she did’ (p.90). For it is ‘quite plausible such angry measures sprang not from malevolence but from self-defence’: at the least, Anne’s behaviour was readily comprehensible’ (pp. 90-91). But if she did threaten to kill Mary then this, Bernard argues, was stepping over the mark, with the implication that Anne was capable of lacking pragmatism and was rather unable to understand political affairs. For threatening to remove Mary and Katherine would undoubtedly provoke the Emperor and worsen Henry’s position. This would have been disastrous.

One of the major problems I had with Bernard’s discussion was his reluctance to state boldly what he believed to have occurred. Does he truly credit Chapuys’s constant claims that Anne wished to remove Mary? Bernard will not say so, perhaps because he does not know whether to or whether not to see Chapuys as that credible. Perhaps his unwillingness to affirm such accounts outright is sensible, and shows a necessary cautious approach.


Bernard’s account of Anne’s attitude towards Mary is based largely on Chapuys’s writings. Chapuys, as we know, was hardly an impartial observer. And in fairness to Bernard, he mentions this. But he still chooses to frequently use Chapuys’s comments without referring to others. Possibly because other accounts are often rather silent on Anne’s alleged behaviour. But this silence is important, for it prompts us to ponder the validity of Chapuys’s claims. The fact that Chapuys was at times the only writer to mention such acts of maliciousness does not necessarily make these claims false. But just because he states them does not make them true either.

For Bernard, Henry VIII was the main instigator of his annulment from Katherine, and his involvement in the direction of this affair (and synonymously ecclesiastical affairs) is more noted than Anne’s. Anne obviously supported her husband’s actions, though Bernard’s Anne is often a woman with rarely acted independently and was the initial advocate of views that Henry would adopt. She did not advance herself to be queen – for Bernard believes Anne never refused Henry sexually in the beginning and demanded marriage or nothing. Bernard’s Anne adopted stances on issues that evidently favoured her cause – for instance becoming stridently anti-papal. Ultimately she was not the influential figure that others have advanced. Yet we are supposed to credit the probability that Anne may have been capable of ‘independently go[ing] beyond what Henry would have been prepared to accept’, with her hatred of Katherine and Mary (p. 91). Would Anne, who Bernard at times regulates to little importance, be bold enough to declare that if she became regent upon a proposed trip the king might make to France, that she would execute Mary or at the very least starve her to death? (p.83) Was Anne capable of constantly acting 'without the king’s knowledge’ as Chapuys reports, a line which Bernard includes in his account? (p.87) [1]

But, perhaps most importantly, did it really take Anne Boleyn to ‘egg on’ Henry concerning what to do with his daughter? My answer would be no. I think it is quite clear that Henry VIII was personally affronted with his daughter’s actions and enraged that not only would she defy him but she would side with her mother. It may be true that Henry had tears in his eyes when he spoke of his daughter’s defiance to the French ambassador who subsequently replied that Mary had nonetheless been granted an excellent upbringing (p. 81). But these were not tears for his daughter. For Henry, it was he who was the injured party here. It is quite clear that he was astonished by his daughter’s actions; angered and hurt. Though I do not suggest for one minute that we share his outlook, it was, nonetheless, his approach. Even Chapuys came to realise this. For after Anne’s execution, when many around the king were calling for Mary’s return to court, Chapuys noted that Henry had responded by stating:

"As to the legitimation of our daughter Mary...if she would submit to our Grace, without wrestling against the determination of our laws, we would acknowledge her and use her as our daughter; but we would not be directed or pressed herein". [2]

Henry’s message was clear. If Mary would not help herself by recanting her position then she should expect the treatment that she was already receiving. And this was Henry being polite. The other Henry was encouraging the lords visiting Mary to convince her to give into his demands, to be as ruthless as they could in their dealings with her. As Chapuys also commented, ‘the King got into a great anger against the obstinacy and disobedience of the said Princess, showing clearly that he bore her very little love or goodwill’. [3]


Bernard certainly does not suggest Henry was innocent in all this. He notes that the direction of blame on Anne was ‘another example of Henry’s political skill at directing policy while allowing others to shoulder public responsibility for it’ (p.90). But this statement is at odds with his then acceptance of Chapuys’s accounts – for he uses Chapuys enough to make it appear as if he should be listened to – which seeks at times to diminish Henry’s responsibility.



There is one concept absent in the chapter yet needs to be examined. To what extent was Chapuys embellishing aspects, not only to demote Anne’s reputation further but also to strengthen Katherine and Mary’s stances against her? Now we may argue that Anne was already regarded badly from Katherine and Mary’s perspectives, and this undoubtedly and understandably was true. But Chapuys’s constant allegations against Anne which he readily reported to Katherine and Mary had a further impact on their views. I turn here to the arguments of David Loades in his biography, Mary Tudor: A Life, one of the finest studies on Mary. For Loades, Chapuys has falsely been portrayed as an excellent supporting presence for Mary during these years. Instead we should perceive him as an individual who worsened an already bad situation by encouraging Mary to become more strident in her opposition. ‘He did not invent, or even encourage, her uniquely abrasive style, but he did offer her all the support and encouragement in his power’.[4] We may pause to question what was wrong with this; surely supporting her was better than berating a girl already tormented. Mary had already her father and Anne to contend with and she lacked the physical presence of her mother, yet Chapuys was able to see both and act as an intermediary. The problem though, as Loades indicates, is that the ambassador did not just offer her moral support. He was, instead, encouraging her to openly rebel. Coupled with his enthusiasm for Katherine and Mary to reclaim their positions by force, his actions were dangerous. If Mary was seen to wilfully support his plans her position would have worsened considerably. For Loades, Chapuys’s advice often proved more useless then it did useful and his constant contradictions and hopeful yet empty promises only sought to confuse Mary about the reality of the situation than assist her emotionally throughout all this.

If we accept this interpretation of Chapuys’s motives and character – as, in the words of Loades, a ‘deeper and more devious’ Chapuys than some have wished to present (p. 84) – then Bernard’s frequent use of Chapuys as a source here is misleading. Earlier on in the book, Bernard has already cast doubt on Chapuys’s claims in regards to the alleged constant instability of Henry and Anne’s marriage; this causes the reader to then question why we should so willing accept Chapuys’s remarks about Anne’s relationship with Mary. If he could exaggerate about one, then why not the other?




This post will probably appear as some attempt to rehabilitate Anne’s character. I do not, however, doubt that Anne truly feared Mary and perceived her as a threat. I do not doubt that she spoke out against her. Till her death Mary always perceived Anne as a wicked woman and we cannot blame Chapuys entirely for enforcing this view. Mary’s perception of Anne was understandable. Anne’s rise meant her own downfall and her mother’s. Mary, I believe, regarded her mother as almost saint-like figure and this view was primarily formed when Mary gave into her father’s demands, for Katherine never did relent, never did compromise on her position. Katherine once told her daughter that the path to paradise was not an easy one; one had to serve God faithfully in order to receive His acclamation.[5] Do not give in, she told Mary; remember what ‘you do owe unto God and unto me’. But Mary of course did ‘give in’ – very understandably so – and thus her mother, I believe, became a figure which Mary regarded with a mixture of filial love, admiration and awe for her own staunch stance on the matter of her marriage and Mary’s legitimacy. Consequently her mother’s perceived usurper could not be regarded with mercy. But, as even Bernard admits, Anne’s actions were equally understandable. We may sympathise with Katherine for upholding her daughter’s rights, though we often overlook Anne’s efforts in doing the same for Elizabeth. And given that Anne’s position was far more precarious than Katherine’s, for she did not have the powerful relations abroad to intervene on her behalf and as she had successful replaced one queen she unwittingly gave another the precedent to do the same, verbal threats were the tools she had. Not admirable but, to repeat Bernard again, ‘understandable’.

I stated at the beginning of this post that Bernard’s consultation of original source material was admirable, and this, I think, is one of the leading features of the work. But occasionally we lose the ‘ifs’ and ‘perhaps’ in context to Chapuys and he becomes once again the central figure. Retha Warnicke, who has also written extensively on Anne Boleyn, has questioned why we over rely on Chapuys. ‘These biased documents, which Freidmann considered “of the greatest value”, still shape how some modern historians approach her [Anne’s] life’, she complained.[6] Certainly. But then Warnicke is not guiltless of endorsing the accounts of certain of Anne’s critics in the formation of her own theories on this figure. Like Chapuys, we can all be guilty of being inconsistent.





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[1] There is also the subject of the royal households; did Anne exert a large say in how Mary was to be treated within Elizabeth’s household? Jeri McIntosh’s study, From Heads of Household to Heads of State: The Preaccession Households of Mary and Elizabeth Tudor, 1516-1558, implicates Henry as the main instigator. Though she believes Anne wished ‘to drive home the distinctions between her daughter, the real princess, and the now illegitimate Lady Mary’ (p. 40) by, for instance, ensuring Elizabeth was dressed sumptuously, McIntosh designates responsibility to Henry when discussing the actions committed against Mary.

[2] Cited from David Loades, Mary Tudor: A Life (Oxford, 1990), p. 99.

[3] James Gairdner (ed.), Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume X: January-June 1536 (London, 1887), 1069.

[4] Loades, Mary Tudor, p.83

[5] BL Arundel 151, fol. 195.

[6] Paul Friedmann was the author of a two volume biography on Anne Boleyn published in 1884. The work relied extensively on Chapuys’s dispatches. Retha M. Warnicke, ‘Reshaping Tudor Biography: Anne Boleyn and Anne of Cleves’, in Lloyd E. Ambrosius (ed.), Writing Biography: Historians & Their Craft (Lincoln and London, 2004), p. 60.