Henry VIII's funeral

Today in 1547, Henry VIII was laid to rest in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, next to wife number three, Jane Seymour. The poor pallbearers had some difficulty in handling the oversized coffin; we are told that it took sixteenth yeomen and ‘four strong linen towels’ to lower the coffin into the crypt. As was the custom, the accession of the next king, Edward VI, was pronounced at the ceremony. Mary was now heir to the throne.


A few months back I consulted several documents regarding Henry’s death in the National Archives, amongst them his will (TNA E/23/4/1). Mary’s position within the succession was approved in the third Act of Succession (1544) – ‘the saide Imperall Crowne and all other the p’misses shallbe to the Ladye Marie the Kinges Highness Daughter’[1]. The Act also allowed Henry to name additional successors in his will or by letters patent, which he duly did. In the will, the throne was left to the heirs of Frances Grey if is his youngest daughter, Elizabeth, died childless. Frances’s children, Jane, Katherine and Mary Grey, were the granddaughters of Henry VIII’s younger sister, the other Mary Tudor. So Henry bypassed the heirs of his elder sister, Margaret, Queen of Scotland which included, by 1547, the young Mary, Queen of Scots and Margaret Stewart, Countess of Lennox (who was good friends with our Mary Tudor, so much so that it was rumoured, during Mary’s reign, that she would make Margaret her heir and deny Elizabeth the throne).


Here is page eight of the will. After leaving the throne to Edward, Mary is named as the next in line:




Notice the tiny error made – the clerk put down first that the crown was to be left to ‘our sayd doughter Mary lawfully begotten’, then quickly adding in before ‘lawfully’ – ‘and the heyres of her body’. Mary’s children had to be legitimate in order to succeed her. She, on the other hand, could inherit as the King’s illegitimate daughter. It then goes on to state that any marriage she entered into must have the approval of the Privy Council. Failing to secure their consent, she risked being denied the throne.


Now only was Mary an heiress, she was also a wealthy one:




‘Further our will is that from the furst hower of our death until such tyme as the sayd Counsaillours canne provide either of them [Mary and Elizabeth] or bothe of sum honorable mariages they shall have eche of them thre thousand poundes ultra reprisas to lyve on...’

Both also inherited properties and precious goods; Mary received over thirty properties in the south-east. She continued to acquire estates, the most significant being Framlingham Castle, Suffolk, granted to her by the Crown in mid 1553. Framlingham played an important role during her campaign for the throne in the same year.





We do not know for sure whether Mary attended her father’s funeral. Katherine Parr certainly did, witnessing the burial from the Queen’s Closet that had once been constructed for Henry’s first wife, and Mary’s mother, Katherine of Aragon. There are records though for materials, namely yards of black velvet, needed for Mary and her household who were now in mourning. The National Archives holds the Lord Chamberlain’s account of ‘The precedente of the Buriall of oure late Soveragane lorde kynge henry the eighte’ (LC 2/2). It lists the ladies, gentlewomen, gentlemen, ushers, and other household staff attending Mary, providing all with suitable mourning clothes. Many of the individuals mentioned served Mary for many years, including Susan Clarencius, Mary Finch and Beatrice ap Rhys the laundress (who had been in Mary’s household by the early 1520s).




(Ladies and gentlewomen attending Mary)




For further information on Henry's will, see J. L McIntosh, From Heads of Households to Heads of State: The Preaccession Households of Mary and Elizabeth Tudor, 1516-1558 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), pp. 201-17, which can be read online: http://www.gutenberg-e.org/mcintosh/appendix-a.html

[1] The Statutes of the Realm, vol. III (London, 1817), p. 955.

New Year’s Gift List of 1534 & the possible portrait of Mary

Yesterday, whilst working on my dissertation in the National Archives, I consulted one document which relates somewhat to my previous post on the possible portrait of Mary. The portrait allegedly dates to c.1535 a time which, I argued, would not make sense given Mary was in disgrace. To emphasise this further here is the New Year’s Gift list of 1534 which details gifts granted to and from the King. You will notice a blatant omission. Mary was clearly out of favour owing to her stance against Henry’s new marriage, behaviour which Henry regarded as dangerous and unruly. She was given nothing and no gift from her was accepted by him (not that she was in a sufficient financial position to get her father a gift in the first place).



(Notice Henry VIII’s signature on the top of the list. His signature can also be found at the end of the document).









The question of who would commission the portrait remains. Certainly Henry would not have ordered it. As for Mary’s supporters, would they have risked the King’s wrath by having a portrait of Mary commissioned? There is certainly no evidence of Mary sitting for a portrait from late 1533 to the summer of 1536. Could supporters have produced portraits without requiring a sitting? This idea is undermined not only by the lack of evidence of any supporter actually having such a portrait produced, but also by the French ambassador’s claims in 1541 that no image of Mary could be made without the King’s consent. Explaining why he had failed to obtain a portrait of Mary he explained, ‘no painter dare attempt it without the King’s command’. Mary would only commission her own portrait in 1544, immediately after she had been reinstated in the succession. The painting in question is one of the most familiar images of Mary.

Thursday, 6 July 1553 – The King is dead

“... I have been with my lord prince, whose life I pray God long to prosper and continue; for his grace is the goodliest babe that ever I set mine eyes upon. I pray God make him an old man, for I think I should never be weary of looking on him.”

(Letter from Honor Plantagenet, Lady Lisle to her husband discussing her visit to the infant Prince Edward’s household, 1538)

“I am faint: Lord have mercy upon me, and take my spirit.”

(The alleged last words of Edward VI, 6 July 1553)

On the night of 12 October 1537, London was the scene of magnificent celebrations. Bonfires were lit, feasts were held and the Tower’s guns were fired continuously. For at 2am that same day the kingdom was blessed with a male heir – the Tudor dynastic line was secure. After three marriages, two ending in tragic fashions, Henry VIII had his healthy legitimate son. When the baby was christened three days later and brought back from the chapel to be handed over to his parents, his father was recorded to have wept for joy whilst holding his son.


Now, nearly sixteen years later, the boy was dead. His end was a prolonged and undignified one. His hair and nails had fallen out; the constant vomiting had led to extreme weight loss. The smell of the vile fluid he coughed up was as potent as the puss that had seeped from his aged father’s famous leg wound. In March 1553 the Venetian ambassador had reported that the boy, though ill, was still handsome. Now he was barely recognisable. Edward made one last confession, and between eight and nine o’clock in the evening he died in the arms of Sir Thomas Worth and long-term friend Sir Henry Sidney at the palace of Greenwich. He was fifteen years old.


It was popularly claimed that he had been poisoned but then almost any time a prominent individual died, especially at a young age, foul play was cited. Despite these accusations Edward alive was far more valuable to the duke of Northumberland and his men than otherwise. There were still things to do – Mary had not yet been captured – and the conspirators needed to act fast. The same day the duke ordered provisions for the royal ships sent to patrol the waters. Unaware of her brother’s death Mary continued to press on. It has been argued by Diarmaid MacCulloch and Anna Whitelock that she arrived at Bury St. Edmunds and was welcomed by John Bourchier, the second earl of Bath at his family seat of Hengrave Hall. When Robert Wingfield recorded the events of Mary’s accession only a year later he neglected to mention her stay at Hengrave but instead infers that she travelled to the residence of Lady Burgh where she was certainly present by the 7th. Whether we accept the Hengrave story or not, the role of the earl of Bath in Mary’s cause should not be ignored. The earl had notably been absent from London at this time which meant that, rather conveniently, he could not sign in person the final version of Edward’s alterations to the succession. He was also a religious conservative and had a wife who Mary may have been familiar with for her previous husband had been Sir Richard Long, a courtier highly favoured by Henry VIII. Mary’s accession to the throne is in essence a story of the importance of ‘connections’ in Tudor political life. Whether the earl of Bath entertained her or not on the 6th, he was one the first peers to support her claim.


Northumberland’s efficiency and enthusiasm was matched by another individual in London. Robert Reyns, a goldsmith, was preparing for an important journey. His discovery of Edward's death proved valuable to Mary’s cause. For Reyns was not any simple goldsmith but one who had been previously engaged by Mary, a great lover of jewels. Evidently it did not take Reyns long to decide which queen to back. Quickly fleeing the city and probably riding at breakneck speed with few rests, he rushed to be the first to tell Mary the news of her brother’s death and her own accession. Reyns was taking a gamble; if Jane’s cause prevailed, his end would shortly come. But Reyns’s story has a happy ending. Eight months later he was appointed as the royal goldsmith by a gratified Queen Mary. He would be kept rather busy over the next five years.


(Image - detail of a portrait of Edward VI, by an unknown artist, after William Scrots, c.1547. NPG, London.)

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.

Happy birthday Mary!

On this day in 1516 the subject of this blog was born! Like her father and half-sister, Mary was born at Greenwich Palace and christened in the church of the Observant Friars (seen near the right in the sixteenth-century image of the palace posted below).


Mary was the only child of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon that survived infancy. Though not the son desired, Mary was a healthy child and her birth prompted hope that the royal couple could proceed to have another healthy infant. Despite the joy exhibited at her birth the Venetian ambassador, Sebastian Giustinian, still offered his condolences to the new father over the disappointment of the child’s sex. [1] Fortunately Henry VIII did not take offence and subtly reminded the ambassador that both he and his wife were young and, “if it was a daughter this time, by the grace of God the sons will follow”. An earlier report by Giustinian also reveals that news of Ferdinand of Aragon’s death reached the English court whilst Katherine was in labour and her husband naturally withheld the news until after Mary’s birth.


Not only did Mary turn out to be a healthy baby but she was allegedly a rather well behaved one as well. As Henry later boasted to Giustinian, “By God, Mr. Ambassador, this baby never cries”.[2]





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[1] In fact, Giustinian even delayed his formal ‘congratulations’ for some hours because the baby turned out to be a girl!

[2] Though an angel in her father’s eyes, little Mary’s behaviour was not always appreciated by others. On one occasion when Henry VIII was showing off the two-year-old Mary in front of several dignitaries she spotted Dionysius Memo, the Venetian organist, and started exclaiming loudly ‘Priest! Priest!’ in order to gain his attention and get him to play for her. Henry thought this was adorable; onlookers thought Mary was little better than a spoilt royal brat!

Princess Mary’s lodgings at Whitehall Palace

A while back I made a post on Mary’s connection to Beaulieu Palace, including a recent archaeological dig there that has unearthed a nursery that was probably made for Mary.


This short post looks at evidence of another residence used by Mary – her apartments at Whitehall Palace. The extravagance of her apartments gives us some indication of the way in which Mary was treated and regarded by her father, Henry VIII, who constructed the rooms for her.





The images depicted here are from two paintings of Whitehall Palace. The image on the top comes from a painting of Whitehall made in c.1700 whilst the other is from The Lord Mayor’s Procession on the River Thames (artist unknown, mid-seventeenth century). The building focused upon is the lodgings of Mary which were situated by the riverside gallery and were completed in 1543, five years prior to the death of her father. Her Whitehall lodging consisted of a small courtyard house which the building accounts describe as ‘my lady maries newe lodging’.[1] It was built on the two southernmost bastions of the river wall which were used as bases for two-storey bay windows, with oriel windows set at first-floor level. The intervening wall space was also filled with windows to make the east wall of the lodgings more or less entirely glass on the first floor.


The splendour of Mary’s apartments indicates the favour she enjoyed from her royal father. It was during this year that Mary was re-included in Henry’s succession via a parliamentary statue, despite her illegitimacy. The lodgings may also be a symbol of the steady harmonious relationship between Henry and Mary, which had initially been wrecked by Henry’s repudiation of Katherine of Aragon, his break from Rome, Mary’s own downgrade in status, and Mary’s refusal to recognise the legality of her father’s actions. In June 1536 Henry managed to break Mary’s resolve, and after swearing to recognise Henry’s ecclesiastical status, the invalidity of her parent’s marriage and her own illegitimate status, Mary set to present herself as the king’s obedient daughter. Furthermore it seems that Henry enjoyed Mary’s company and that Mary had established a place for herself at court. Interestingly 1543 was the year Henry married Katherine Parr who was a member of Mary’s household. It is possible that Henry began to take notice of Katherine during visits with his daughter. Such visits were frequent; by February 1543 one contemporary noted that the king ‘was calling at [the princess’] apartments two or three times a day’ [2]. It is therefore possible that these lodgings provided a setting for Henry’s pursuit of his last wife.






On my YouTube channel I have posted a video on Whitehall which features Simon Thurley. It gives some idea of what the palace was like during Henry VIII’s reign:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NDbEBIGAUU


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[1] Source from Simon Thurley, The Royal Palaces of Tudor England: Architecture and Court Life, 1460-1547 (New Haven and London, 1993), p. 79.

[2] Susan James, Catherine Parr: Henry VIII’s Last Love (Gloucestershire, 2009), p. 77.

Mary and the royal manor of Beaulieu

A few months back, Channel 4 aired a fantastic documentary on Henry VIII’s palaces, which involved the guys from Time Team. They attempted to recover evidence of Henry VIII’s lost palaces and examined the area where the Palace of Beaulieu once stood [1]. Prior to Henry’s building work, the site contained an impressive manor which was granted to Thomas Boteler (or ‘Butler’), Earl of Ormonde by Henry VII in 1491. In 1515 Thomas died and the property was granted to his daughter and coheir, Margaret who had married Sir William Boleyn [2]. William sold the property to Henry VIII sometime in 1515 and by January 1516 the king had already started to rebuild the manor.





When Beaulieu is mentioned in connection to Mary it often concerns her time there as an adolescent or later in life. It was at this royal manor that Mary composed a letter to her father detailing her astonishment that she had lost the title princess owing to his decision to annul his marriage to Katherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn in 1533. It was also where the duke of Norfolk was sent to tell Mary that Henry desired her ‘to go to the Court and service of [Elizabeth], whom he named Princess’. In short, this was where Mary was informed that her new half-sister was now considered the king’s legitimate daughter and that she was now the illegitimate ‘Lady Mary’.


In her father’s will Mary was granted Beaulieu along with numerous other properties [3]. And in 1553, just after Mary had been pronounced as queen across the country, Beaulieu was where she was presented with a purse made of crimson velvet and filled with coins from the City of London, as a token of their respect for their new queen.


So Beaulieu became a well favoured residence for Mary. It was also where she declared before the sacrament that she would marry Philip of Spain with the Imperial ambassador and her lady-in-waiting Susan Clarencius being the only ones present. However it is not Mary’s connections as an adolescent or as queen to the royal manor that was examined in the Time Team programme. A much earlier connection was uncovered.


Whilst examining the ruins of the old royal manor in search of Henry VIII’s own apartments, the archaeologists came across another area where the original drainage system was existent and there were signs of previous massive bay windows that characterised the grand rooms of that period. Jonathon Foyle, an architectural historian who was present at the dig, proposed the theory that the rooms found were the royal nursery built for the infant Mary. He argued that the presence of either kitchens or a laundry belonging to rooms above indicated that the chambers belonged to an important individual, like a royal child.


Layout of Beaulieu. The red area to the bottom left marks the spot of the royal nursery.



The dates make sense. Henry purchases the manor in 1515 and work starts in January of 1516. By that point Katherine of Aragon was heavily pregnant and Mary was born in February of that year. Perhaps Henry, anticipating the birth of a male heir, purchased the manor for the child. The home was outside London and situated in the countryside and therefore away from dangers like plague making it a perfect location for the baby. Around £17,000 was spent on the manor between 1516 and 1522, indicating that the improvements were for someone notable [4].


There is also another and more striking indication that the manor has a connection to the infant Mary. Beaulieu is now lost to us but the arms of Henry VIII that formerly belonged to the outer gatehouse of the manor still survives. In the top right a pomegranate is included (the badge of Katherine of Aragon) and instead of being depicted with a slit with seeds poking through to symbolise fertility, a Tudor rose is emerging. It was argued that this represented the birth of a new Tudor, which in 1516 was of course Mary.



The investigation into the manor house provides us with valuable insight into one of Mary’s early residences. The episode can be watched here:
Part 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSYJ69hZPsk
Part 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mPHsdzp_kY&feature=related

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[1] Beaulieu is also known as Newhall, Essex.
[2] Sir William Boleyn (c.1451–1505) was Anne Boleyn’s paternal grandfather
[3] For a list of the properties Mary inherited from her father’s will (Beaulieu is given as ‘Newhall): http://www.flickr.com/photos/20631910@N03/2682859787/in/set-72157604065573545/
[4] Figures given in David Loades, Mary Tudor: A Life, p. 138.



References

Simon Thurley, The Royal Palaces of Tudor England: Architecture and Court Life, 1460-1547 (New Haven and London, 1993), pp. 44-5.

Anna Whitelock, Mary Tudor: England’s First Queen (London, 2009), pp. 56-7, 179.

Mary’s betrothal to Henri, duc d'Orléans, 1527

I thought it would be interesting to do some occasional posts on various images of or connected to Mary.

When most people think of Mary they frequently picture the notable portraits of her as queen – namely the wonderful Hans Eworth of Antonis Mor images. The very young Mary can often be overlooked, although admittedly we have few images of her as a preadolescent.


This image of Mary is from a marriage contract between herself and Henri, duc d'Orléans (second son of François I of France). Henri is depicted on the left and between himself and Mary is Hymenaeus, the God of marriage. The marriage contract was ratified on the 18th August 1527 and signified a peace treaty between Henry VIII and François. There had previously been discussion of a marriage between the widowed François and the eleven year old Mary, although it was decided that the eight year old Henri would be her prospective husband.


Mary had previously been betrothed to Henri’s elder brother, the dauphin of France (the heir to the French throne) although the match broke when Henry repudiated the peace treaty between England and France and betrothed Mary instead to the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V (who was Katherine of Aragon’s nephew, hence Mary’s first cousin). After Charles subsequently abandoned Mary to marry Isabella of Portugal, Henry turned back to France and the treaty of Amiens was made.


Accompanying this newfound friendship between France and England was the exchange of honours. François installed Henry as a knight of the Order of St Michael in November 1527 and in the same month Henry made the French king a knight of the Garter. The statutes of the Order of the Garter that was presented to François can be seen to the left. At the bottom there is a woman holding together the Tudor rose and the French fleurs-de-lis, indicating the unity between the two kings. She is Concord and it has been suggested that she is representing Princess Mary, whose marriage to the French prince would cement the treaty.



Ultimately Mary and Henri did not marry – talk of the marriage dissolved with the alliance and when Mary’s status was attacked by father’s decision to annul his first marriage. The year in which Henry VIII officially annulled his marriage to Katherine of Aragon and Mary was subsequently illegitimatised marked Henri’s marriage to Catherine de’Medici. Both Henri and Mary would go on to be monarchs – Henri became his father’s heir in 1536 and ruled as Henri II (1547-1559). Despite the peaceful tone of the treaty that once promised Mary and Henri to each other, the pair would ultimately engage in conflict and it was to Henri that Mary lost Calais.





References

Charles Giry-Deloison, ‘A Diplomatic Revolution? Anglo-French Relations and the Treaties of 1527’, in David Starkey (ed.), Henry VIII: A European Court in England (London, 1991), pp. 77-87.

David Starkey, 'The Order of the Garter and St Michael', in David Starkey (ed.), Henry VIII: A European Court in England (London, 1991), pp. 94-99.

Anne of Cleves and Princess Mary

Anne of Cleves was Mary’s third stepmother, and later a good friend. Anne, who is always perceived to have been Henry VIII’s ‘lucky wife’ for she kept her head, was also the last of his wives to die. When she died in 1557 Mary, who was then queen, ensured that she was buried with full honours at Westminster Abbey. Yet their relationship got off to a rocky start.


(Detail of a miniature of Anne of Cleves by Hans Holbein the Younger)

Anne arrived in England on 27 December 1539 and married Henry on the 6th January 1540. David Loades in Mary Tudor: The Tragical history of the first Queen of England (2006) asserts that Mary was present at her father’s wedding and cites from Retha Warnicke’s work on the Cleves marriage to back this point. However he has cited this information incorrectly as Warnicke points out that we don’t know when Anne and Mary first met. She even notes that plans to have both Mary and her half-sister Elizabeth amongst those to greet the new queen were cancelled. Although the idea that Mary was present at her father’s wedding to Anne of Cleves as been affirmed in a recent biography – Linda Porter’s Mary Tudor: the First Queen (2007) – again no primary source is used to back up this story.


So we do not know when the two women first met, but the subject of their meeting proved to a point of controversy.


Why a disagreement occurred is still relatively unknown. But the dispute occurred in Easter 1540 (holidays are always a popular time for family quarrels!) It seems that Henry VIII asked Anne to call upon Mary to attend her and stay in her household. There was nothing amiss in this request – we know, for example, that Henry asked his subsequent wife, Katherine Howard, to do the same thing in May 1541. By this point Henry and his daughter Mary were reunited and he appears to have found her company pleasing. It therefore seems likely that Henry, who was rather disappointed with his marriage to Anne, wanted to have his daughter back at court to keep him company. Anne was none too pleased and she made this known.


(Painted oak bed-head probably made for Anne of Cleves and Henry VIII)

Why did Anne not want Mary at court? Was it perhaps jealousy that her husband showed more interest in his daughter than in her? Was this worsened by the fact that her new-stepdaughter was only a year younger than herself and also pretty, thus could have overshadowed Anne? Was she offended by Mary’s faith? Mary has always been presented as staunch Catholic whereas Anne of Cleves has been regarded as a Lutheran. However Anne, who was raised by her Catholic mother, worshiped in the same manner as her husband who was certainly not a Lutheran and in turn would have worshipped in the manner Mary did. It seems hard to assert that Mary’s faith offended Anne because the pair became very good friends later on and Anne died a devout Catholic thus indicating that the pair shared similar interests and ideas. In short the idea that Anne was a Lutheran is incorrect and based almost simply on the fact that Anne has family ties with Lutherans (namely to her brother-in-law, the Elector of Saxony).


Retha Warnicke’s suggestion that Anne was offended by the presence of her husband’s illegitimate child at court seems interesting. Mary was no ordinary royal bastard but Anne, who seems to have been uninformed about so many things, may not have been told about Mary’s delicate situation. By asking her to have Mary in his household, Henry may have offended his new wife. On top of that Mary was the cousin of Charles V and Charles just so happened to be her brother’s and her brother-in-law’s enemy.


But the tense situation was soon over with as Anne and Mary became good friends, possibly because Anne was later informed of Mary’s situation. On top of that it seems that Mary treated her as with respect, which may have improved matters.


Henry of course later annulled his marriage to Anne, having by that point become enraptured with one of Anne’s ladies-in-waiting, Katherine Howard. Mary never took to Katherine and continued to treat Anne well. In March 1543, Henry VIII even licensed his former wife to visit the princesses at court for several days. After his death Anne and Mary appear to have seen each other infrequently (there is a recorded visit between the two in 1551). By this time both had their respective problems; for Anne it was financial, for Mary it was more dangerous as her Catholic faith put her in direct opposition to the reformist policies of Edward VI’s reign.


When Mary did become queen, Anne shared in the celebrations. Alongside Princess Elizabeth she rode in a chariot lined with cloth of silver, during the coronation procession on 29th September 1553 and sat at the foot of the queen’s table at the coronation banquet on 1st October. She also sought financial assistance from the new queen and Mary appears to have been ready to help.


Anne died, aged forty-one, on 16th July 1557, appointing as the overseer of her will, “our most dearest and entirely beloved sovereign lady Queen Mary”. In turn Mary ensured Anne was awarded an impressive funeral at Westminster Abbey. Whilst Mary enjoyed good relations with two other stepmothers – Jane Seymour and Katherine Parr – her relationship with Anne was longer than those she enjoyed with the other women. Anne and Mary proved to have a number of things in common, namely that both had faced rejection of sorts from Henry VIII and with this a humiliating downgrade in status.




Further reading:

Linda Porter, Mary Tudor: The First Queen (London, 2007).

Judith M. Richards, Mary Tudor (Oxon, 2008).

Retha M. Warnicke, ‘Anne [Anne of Cleves] (1515-1557)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.

Retha M. Warnicke, The Marrying of Anne of Cleves: Royal Protocol in Tudor England (Cambridge, 2000).

Happy Families: A Deceiving Portrait?

Simon Thurley’s The Royal Palaces of Tudor England: Architecture and Court Life, 1460-1547 is a fascinating read, and contains many wonderful images. Whilst researching for my undergraduate dissertation I came across this interesting drawing. It is designs by Erhad Schön, or his workshop, for the left-hand side of the east window of the chapel of Hampton Court. The drawings date to c.1520/29 and were commissioned by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey who by this time was still the owner of this impressive palace. The designs are rather conventional – the royal family are depicted along with three saints, two of which are probable the royal couple’s namesake. This includes (from left to right), St Katherine, St Henry and St George. The three royals are Princess Mary, Katherine of Aragon and Henry VIII. They are presented as engaging in prayer emphasising the expected and actual pious nature of the characters in question (and yes – for all his actions Henry was, or at least perceived himself to be extremely devout!).


The designs remind me of a previous family group image – that of Henry VII, Elizabeth of York and their children kneeling before Joachim and Anna at the Golden Gate, from the Ordinances of the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception, London, 1503 (see image to the left). Again the individuals are depicted in prayer, and the children most unrealistically depicted (only four of Henry VII’s children survived infancy, but Prince Edmund and Princesses Elizabeth and Katherine all of whom died as infants are depicted as adults, or at least as adolescents here. Furthermore Princes Arthur and Henry along with Princesses Margaret and Mary were all children when this image was created but all appear older).


A similar situation may have occurred with this image of Henry VIII and his ‘first family’. If this drawing does date to the early 1520s than Princess Mary would have been a small children (she was born in 1516). Yet she is depicted as older. On the other hand Mary’s maturity here could indicate a later date, maybe the mid 1520s, or slightly later. The date c.1527/9 could be ruled out as in 1527 Henry asked Wolsey to investigate the validity of his marriage to Katherine of Aragon. By this point Henry was arguing that owing to Katherine’s previous union with his brother, she was not his lawful wife. Thus it would have been incredibly bold or, to be blunt, rather foolish for Wolsey to commission an image depicting Henry alongside Katherine in the full regalia of the queen.


I think it is possible that the image dates to the mid 1520s when Mary was sent to Ludlow. I believe that Henry VIII was never confident about having Mary as his heir and by the mid 1520s he was awarding his illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, far more titles and powers than his legitimate daughter. Yet Henry was proud of his daughter and commissioned images of her (including the Lucas Horenbout miniature). By 1525 he decided to send her to Ludlow Castle, the traditional seat of the princes of Wales and she went with an impressive household, composed by Wolsey. Importantly, she was sent to represent the king in Wales and the marches. Whilst Henry did not, and never did, officially grant Mary the title of ‘Princess of Wales’ (although other people took to calling her that), he was signifying that she was his daughter, and therefore a suitable candidate to represent him in a part of his realm.




Could then this image date to this period; at which time Mary was no longer an infant locked in the royal nursery but becoming a more active member of the royal family?



Interestingly, if this image does date to the mid 1520s, it belongs to a time when Henry was starting to have significant concerns regarding the lack of a male heir. Beneath this harmonious family portrait lays tensions. It is often believed that Henry stopped sleeping with Katherine around 1525 (which may have been an indication that she had ceased to be able to bear children). Thus it seems Henry had given up on hopes to have a male heir with this wife. At the same time he was advancing his illegitimate son, and according to David Loades in Mary Tudor: The Tragical history of the first Queen of England, he was also keen on separating Mary from Katherine. According to Loades, Henry ‘was keeping his options open, and at the same time separating the child from what he probably saw as the overweening influence of her mother’ (p. 22). Was he perhaps also punishing her for what he came to see as her failure to produce a male child? Despite Henry’s belief that both he and Katherine had sinned by marrying one another he clearly perceived his first two wives to be at fault for the lack of a son.



So this image is fascinating in its attempts to convey a picture of domestic peace when it may in fact date to the beginning of the breakdown of Henry VIII’s first marriage. Poignantly, it may also represent the beginning of one of the most drastic and tragic episodes in Mary’s life.