Ten more 'pointless' facts about Mary

Nearly a year ago I posted ten random facts on Mary. Here are another lot, probably pointless, but interesting nonetheless!


1. In 1557 Mary declared war on Henri II of France. She sent a herald to the French court to announce the impending conflict. Instead of receiving him, Henri went hunting for two days. When he arrived back and the herald was finally granted an audience, he was cut off by the king on the grounds that he could not possibly hear war being declared on him by a woman. That was too unthinkable.


2. On the occasion of their marriage in 1554, Philip gave Mary a huge diamond (some girls have all the luck!) that his father, Charles V, had given his mother, Isabella of Portugal when they married in 1526. Thankfully no one at the time mentioned that in order to marry Isabella, Charles had repudiated his betrothed – Mary. Luckily such matters were long forgotten and forgiven by the time Mary married Charles’s son.


3. Mary loved gambling. Fortunately she was of a sufficient position to bet huge sums. Unfortunately she was not always blessed with a winning streak. In 1540, during one engrossing game of bowls (a pastime which Mary liked and placed sums on) she resorted to asking servants for money. They refused so Mary waged next day’s breakfast. Her servants were right to be cautious. As Mary’s account book attests -‘Payed for a Brekefaste loste at Bolling by my lady maryes grace’.


4. In November 1553, Mary requested a portrait of her future husband. Philip’s aunt and Mary’s cousin, Queen Mary of Hungary, had a stunning portrait of her nephew by Titian and said she would be prepared to loan it to Mary until Philip arrived in England. It seems Mary was rather attached to this portrait; by late 1554 Mary of Hungary was still asking for it back.

Philip (1527–1598), by Titian, c.1551

5. The only text by a woman printed in England during Mary’s reign was Mary Basset’s translation of Thomas More’s, History of the Passion. Basset, who dedicated her translation of Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History to Mary and was one of her ladies-in-waiting, was More’s granddaughter and the daughter of the equally talented scholar, Margaret Roper.


6. A large ruby, sent by Louis VII of France in 1179 to decorate the tomb of Thomas Becket, was ‘appropriated’ by Henry VIII upon the shrine’s destruction. As queen, Mary had the jewel set in a collar and wore it upon occasion.


7. Mary was a fan of that English classic, strawberries and cream. She enjoyed strawberries in general and received batches of them as gifts.

Mary's dish of choice.

8. For Philip’s royal entry into London in 1554, a series of pageants were held. One involved an acrobat, from Spain, performing tricks on the roof of St Paul’s Cathedral. Mary had been similarly entertained at her coronation pageant over a year earlier when a Dutch acrobat balanced on the weathercock of the Cathedral. Perhaps the Spanish acrobat performed the same trick. Unfortunately something went wrong, and the tumbler ended up dead from his act.


9. Since she was a young girl, Mary practised the custom of drawing Valentines, whereby a ‘Valentine’ is selected and a mock romance is played out. When she was nine-years-old, Mary’s chosen Valentine was her treasurer of the Privy Chamber, Richard Sydnor and she referred to herself in messages addressed to him as ‘your wyfe’ and him as her ‘husband adoptif’. However Sydnor was a rather sickly man, who found it hard to keep up this ‘romance’. The young Mary playfully scolded him; “ye take great care of your goute...than ye do of your wyfe”, she complained.


10. Mary’s ability in Latin from a young age was regarded as very advanced. When Henry Parker, tenth Baron Morley (father to Jane Boleyn), dedicated his translation of Aquinas on the angelic salvation to her, he remarked that when he came across examples of Mary’s Latin he was astonished by her skill; "I do well remember that scant ye were come to twelve years of age but that ye were so ripe in the Latin tongue, that rare doth happen to the woman sex, that your grace not only could perfectly read, write and construe Latin, but furthermore translate any hard thing of the Latin into our English tongue".

Henry Parker, tenth Baron Morley (1480/81–1556), by Albrecht Dürer, 1523

“[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.

Are we demoting Mary by referring to her simply as ‘Mary Tudor’?

Some months ago Professor Peter Marshall of the University of Warwick wrote a fantastic piece for The Times Literary Supplement in which he reviewed several recent publications on Mary. Marshall began his article by observing that,

Mary is the only English monarch routinely known by her family name rather than her regnal number. It’s as if she wasn’t really a proper queen at all, her rule an interruption to the proper numerical progress of monarchical history. The reign was of course an interruption to a particular view of historical progress: that which identified the establishment of Protestantism as the keystone of English national identity and subsequent imperial greatness. In the still remarkably fresh satirical words of 1066 And All That, the Catholic Mary simply failed to understand that “England is bound to be C of E”.

Marshall is certainly correct in his observation that ‘Mary Tudor’ is frequently favoured over ‘Queen Mary I’. But is this a conscious or unconscious act of disrespect? Is there really anything wrong in calling Mary, ‘Mary Tudor’?

It is, undoubtedly, anachronistic to call her ‘Mary Tudor’. As Clifford S.L. Davies observed in an article also published in The Times Literary Supplement:

Queen Mary I is routinely referred to as “Mary Tudor”. This is a historian’s convenience to distinguish her from her cousin Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots; the contemporary terms were “the Princess Mary”, “the Lady Mary”, or “Mary of England”.

And,

If one searches accounts of 1485, of 1509, of the succession crisis of 1553 (the attempt to make Lady Jane Grey Queen), of the accessions of Mary and Elizabeth, even of accounts of Elizabeth’s death in 1603 – occasions on which any historian today could hardly but allude to “Tudor” – the word and concept is conspicuously absent. Mary and Elizabeth are “daughters of Henry VIII”, not “Mary Tudor” or “Elizabeth Tudor”. Henry VII is always described before Bosworth as “Richmond”; as indeed he features in Shakespeare’s Richard III, and in his fleeting appearance in Henry VI Part III.

Thus if we are to credit Davies’s and Marshall’s arguments, not only are we snubbing Mary by refusing to acknowledge her as Queen Mary, but we are also being illogical in our choice of title for the real Mary would not have identified herself as ‘Mary Tudor’. Nor would her contemporaries.

Obviously I used ‘Mary Tudor’ for the title of this blog, so I am guilty – though I like to say instinctively as opposed to maliciously so – of the accusations here. The title of this blog comes from an article Judith Richards wrote in Carole Levin, Jo Eldridge Carney and Debra Garret-Graves (eds.), High and Mighty Queens of early modern England: Realities and Representations (New York, 2003). Richards propagates the view of Mary as a cultivated and intelligent princess and queen, adapt at court and government affairs. It is clear from reading Richards fabulous biography published in 2008, that it is imperative to reconsider Mary’s reign and recognise her partly successful, yet of course highly complex, legacy she left to her sister, Elizabeth I. Mary, Richards concludes, ‘normalised the idea of a female monarch to such an extent that Elizabeth succeeded her without challenge within England’ (p. 242). She also confronts the most controversial of Mary’s policies as monarch and argued that, in the case of the burnings, there has been the tendency to use one aspect of the reign to conclude its whole success. Reasons are provided for England’s declaration of war against France and though Mary had her personal failures, ignorance, stupidity and idleness were clearly not among them. Marshal acknowledges Richards’s argument in her review. It is clear that Richards promotes a far more favourable view of Mary and her reign than has been traditionally asserted. Her use of the title, Mary Tudor, was obviously meant in no way to undermine the figure.


Marshall’s observation of the tendency to refer to Mary not as a queen is an interesting one and should stimulate debate. It is certainly very easy to use ‘Mary Tudor’ without questioning the validity of this and Marshall is correct in prompting us to think further. Yet even he is guilty of adopting this term from time to time. Ultimately I hesitate to say we are devaluing Mary, particularly as two recent biographies on her, Linda Porter's and Anna Whitelock’s books, have included in their title that Mary was England’s first queen regnant. If the title ‘Mary Tudor’ is becoming more popular than the gruesome sobriquet ‘Bloody Mary’ then we are at least progressing in the right direction.

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!

The strange case of Mary Baynton

They say imitation is the highest form of flattery. But in the sixteenth-century, posing as another, particularly an important individual, was a dangerous act. We all know what happened to Arnaud de Tilh and Perkin Warbeck.

In 1533, an eighteen-year-old girl named Mary proclaimed in public the prophecies of her aunt, Mary Tudor, former queen of France, who foretold that her young niece would one day face great hardship. ‘Niece Mary, I am right sorry for you, for I see here that your fortune is very hard. Ye must go a-begging once in your life, either in your youth or in your age’ [1]. The young girl took this advice to heart and vowed to escape abroad ‘to mine uncle the emperor’, and avoid the impending hardships she faced at the hands of her father, the king.


Yet the girl who proclaimed such prophecies was not the daughter of Henry VIII. She had probably never even met him nor Mary, former queen of France, the ‘aunt’ of whom she spoke of. The storyteller’s name was Mary Baynton and for some months she went around impersonating Princess Mary.


Posing as a figure, even one that was currently alive was nothing new. Mary Tudor’s own grandfather, Henry VII, had faced two imposters, one claiming to be Richard, duke of York (youngest son of Edward IV). But why did Mary Baynton decide to pose as the young Princess Mary and why did she choose that moment?


Unfortunately we knew little about Mary Baynton’s life in order to deduce her exact motivations. Yet contemporary movements and sentiments may help us try to understand her bold behaviour. We know that Mary was the daughter of Thomas Baynton of Bridlington in Yorkshire [2]. Aged eighteen, she turned up in Boston, Lincolnshire and addressed herself as the king’s daughter, Princess Mary. By this time Henry VIII had married Anne Boleyn, had his marriage to Katherine of Aragon declared null and void, was expecting the birth of his first child with Anne and had established himself as the supreme figure of authority in the realm, assuming control of the English Church [3]. In short Mary Baynton belonged to a turbulent age. Yet she chose to involve herself in current events instead of keeping her head low. Whether she was the ‘self-deluded lunatic’ as some have dubbed her or was propagating a clear political and religious objective remains uncertain [4]. Ultimately Mary Baynton was knowledgeable about current affairs.


Perhaps Baynton exploiting the current situation for financial purposes? In the guise as Mary she called upon people to give her money so she may pay for her voyage to the Spanish court. She also claimed that the king had completely abandoned her and she was left to shift for herself, a reference to the real Mary’s downgrade in status. Subsequently she was given money although the amount of such sums and the individuals who assisted are unknown to us (though she allegedly attracted the attention of 'diverse and sundry persons, as well as men and women'). She evidently was of a concern for the authorities as she was subsequently arraigned and examined by Nicholas Robson, Thomas Brown and Robert Pulvertoft. She seems to have recanted her claims and disappeared from accounts, likely leading a more unassuming lifestyle.


The story of Mary Baynton is not just an interesting piece of trivia. It illustrates how individuals away from the central power of Westminster, were aware of contemporary developments. Evidently there was a degree of uncertainty for Baynton to succeed in gaining the trust of various individuals in her claims to be Mary. The real Mary was of course not in the north of England but at Hatfield, her own household having been disestablished in late 1533. Perhaps this piece of information was known to some of Baynton’s supporters but, desiring to show contempt for the monarch’s recent actions, they nonetheless supported this controversial figure. This story also indicates to us the prevailing and widespread sympathy for the real Mary’s plight, even as far away as the north of England, an area which Mary never visited. It is no coincident that two years after Baynton publicly declared herself to be Mary in a Lincolnshire town an uprising fuelled by dissatisfaction over the monarch’s actions emerged from the same region. And these rebels listed prominently amongst their demands their desire for Mary to be declared legitimate and granted a place within the succession. The Baynton episode was certainly not as grave a threat to the Crown as the Pilgrimage of Grace, though arguably it acted as a sort of pre-warning to the major events of 1536-37.



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[1] James Gairdner (ed.), Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign Henry VIII, Vol VI (London, 1882), 1193.
[2] Sharon L. Jansen, Dangerous Talk and Strange Behaviour: Women and Popular Resistance to the Reforms of Henry VIII (London, 1996), p. 131.
[3] The L&P place the interrogation of Mary Baynton shortly after the birth of Princess Elizabeth. However these records obviously mark the time Baynton was arraigned for her offence; she likely had been operating for some time beforehand. Perhaps the birth of Elizabeth, who Henry VIII perceived at that point to the first of his legitimate heirs, prompted the authorities to act swiftly against Baynton (and of course her alleged success in gaining supporters was viewed as perturbing by the crown).
[4] M.H. Dodds and R. Dodds, The Pilgrimage of Grace, 1536-1537 and The Exeter Conspiracy, 1538: Vol I (Cambridge, 1915), p. 87.

New collection of articles on Mary and Elizabeth

More information has been released about Alice Hunt and Anne Whitelock (eds.), Tudor Queenship: The Reigns of Mary and Elizabeth (New York, 2010).



The articles included:



Alice Hunt and Anna Whitelock, ‘Machine generated contents note: Partners in throne and grave’.
Anne McLaren, ‘Memorializing Mary and Elizabeth’.
Judith Richards, ‘Examples and Admonitions: What Mary did for Elizabeth'.
Paulina Kewes, ‘Godly queens: The Royal Iconographies of Mary and Elizabeth’.
Alice Hunt, ‘Reforming Tradition: The Coronations of Mary and Elizabeth’.
Maria Hayward, ‘Dressed to Impress’.
Susan Doran, ‘Elizabeth I: an Old Testament King’.
Jeri McIntosh, ‘A Culture of Reverence: Princess Mary's Household’.
Aysha Pollnitz, ‘Christian Women or Sovereign Queens? The Schooling of Mary and Elizabeth’.
Corrina Streckfuss, ‘Our Greatest Hope? European Propaganda and the Spanish Match’.
Alexander Samson, ‘Power-sharing: The Co-monarchy of Mary and Philip’.
Anna Whitelock, ‘Woman, Warrior, Queen?’
Glenn Richardson, ‘Courtly Games: Elizabeth and the Kings of France’.
Ralph Houlbrooke, ‘What Happened to Mary's Councillors?’
Robert C. Braddock, ‘Below Stairs: Serving the Queen’.
Charlotte Merton, ‘Women, Friendship and Memory’.

Course on Tudor Queens at Oxford and other news

I have been neglecting this blog though certainly not due to any lack of interest in Mary Tudor. I have busy starting university and with this have moved to a new city, hence no time to update this site. However a few weeks back I noticed that there is to be a one day course at Oxford University on the subject of queenship in Tudor England (entitled Tudor Queens: Myth and Actuality), which involves two lectures including the example of Mary. Anna Whitelock, whose biography of Mary came out this year, will be speaking. I’m going and will post information regarding the discussions on this blog. The website states that places are still available:


http://www.conted.ox.ac.uk/courses/details.php?id=O09P104HIJ



Since my last entry I have noticed a date for the upcoming book, Alice Hunt and Anna Whitelock (eds.), Tudor Queens: The Reigns of Mary and Elizabeth (Palgrave - I have noticed the title of this book is listed differently on various sites). Apparently it is due out in May 2010 and is 256 pages long. Whitelock has also contributed an article in the recently released book, Liz Oakley-Brown and Louise Wilkinson (eds.), Rituals and Rhetoric of Queenship (Four Courts Press, 2009). The article is entitled ‘Mary: the First Queen of England’.In the same book, S.L. Müller, has written an article entitled ‘Representing the body of Mary Tudor’, which sounds really interesting:


http://www.fourcourtspress.ie/product.php?intProductID=881




There seems to be a succession of works relating to female rule in early modern Europe, some of which will hopeful discuss Mary. One to look out for is Sharon L. Jansen, The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe (out Feb 2010).

Possible portrait of Mary?

Over on TudorHistory.org Blog, there is an interesting post on a portrait of an unknown woman which some believe to depict Mary. I believe the current owner of the portrait is trying to find evidence to prove that it is of Mary and then he intends to sell.





I agree with other posters on the blog in their criticism of the claim. It seems to me that the owner of the portrait, and historian Linda Porter, primarily want the portrait to be of Mary and lack compelling evidence to back this assertion. Porter’s statement that, ‘Plus which, to me at least, it looks like her’, is not valid evidence to be used for the case that this painting depicts England’s first anointed queen regnant. It is ultimately a rather empty statement that doesn’t contribute anything to be the debate. Porter also argues that a portrait once believed to depict Katherine Howard which was then questioned by historians and now accepted is proof that identify of sitters can come full circle, with historians now accepting long established judgments. [1] In this I would also disagree considering the ‘Katherine Howard’ portrait is still debated amongst historians, with many rejecting the idea that it is of Katherine. In fact that National Portrait Gallery have decided to label the portrait as ‘unknown woman, formerly known as Catherine Howard’. Though the portrait was recently used in the Hampton Court exhibit on the six wives of Henry VIII, the curator Brett Dolman noted that there are ‘no undisputed portraits of Katherine’.[2]


As a poster on the TudorHistory.org Blog has pointed out, the portrait dates to the 1550s and therefore does not date to c.1537 (the date which the owner of the portrait believes it to belong to). So we can dismiss the notion that is of Mary at the time of her brother’s birth. And I think, owing to the lack of evidence and the presence of a degree of personal interest in this (after all a portrait of a major Tudor royal is going to fetch quite a bit!), we can dismiss the notion that is of Mary. Perhaps the possibility that the portrait depicts Margaret Douglas, countess of Lennox should be explored further.[3]






The full article, from The Times, can be read here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/court_and_social/article6793832.ece


~~~~~~~~

[1] Porter is directly referring to the current debate surrounding the portrait of an unknown woman by Hans Holbein the Younger, a version of which is housed in the National Portrait Gallery, London. For some time the sitter was believed to depict Katherine Howard, Henry VIII’s fifth wife and Mary’s fourth step-mother.

[2] Statement made in an interview Dolman did with the BBC History Magazine on the exhibit (Vol. 10, no 4; April 2009). Dolman does provide evidence for the portrait being of Katherine but certainly does not present this as something determined, which Porter implies.

[3] Margaret Douglas was first cousin to Mary. Margaret mother was Margaret Tudor, consort to James IV of Scotland and sister to Henry VIII. Mary and Margaret were very close, to the degree that Mary wished Margaret to be her heir and not Elizabeth.

Can historians now agree on the successes of Mary’s reign?

Peter Marshall has written an interesting article on the latest works on Mary’s reign (including Eamon Duffy’s engrossing study on the Marian Church):

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article6723026.ece


The article ends on an optimistic note, and one I wish to share. But is Marshall correct when stating that scholars of this period can now be sure that had Mary not died in November 1558, her reign would not have been the disaster which has long been alleged?



Judith Richards, Eamon Duffy, Linda Porter and Anna Whitelock are not the first historians to advance favorable views of Mary or of aspects of her reign. They are not the first to challenge the assumption that her reign was one of complete sterility or the common longstanding belief that the Marian Church was bound to fail. Richards and Duffy in particular have constructed sound arguments that have contributed immeasurably to the perception of Marian regime as competent, but will their works be widely credited? Will historians of this period listen to these new ideas?


I am bit of a cynical person so my instant conclusion was that the new arguments, whilst encouraging, will not be as quickly and as widely credited as Marshall asserts. When Duffy’s book, Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor had just been released, a review by David Starkey emerged in The Sunday Times. The review was somewhat hostile, accusing Duffy of lacking much sympathy for the persecuted Protestants of Mary’s reign. A positive review was found in The Telegraph, but the reaction of the paper’s readers hardly reflected the praise. One reader, clearly perturbed by Duffy’s (and the reviewer’s) tone, stated:

“So adding a 'renaissance' storey to a mediaeval tomb acquits Bloody Mary of being a backward-looking religious tyrant does it? Anyone, but anyone, who advocates the burning alive of someone else whose opinion differs from theirs, far from being an emblem of 'modernity', is in fact a throw-back to the barbarian hordes."

Furthermore even scholars of Mary’s reign are not in agreement over the argument that a lack of time was Mary’s failure, not her policies. The prime example is that of David Loades, who has worked on Mary’s reign for decades. In his latest work on Mary’s life, Loades concludes that her reign ‘was a failure in terms or her own aims and proprieties’ (Loades, Mary Tudor: The Tragical history of the first queen of England, p. 212). He admits that she could not help being childless, could not avoid the poor harvests and certainly could not prevent dying only after five years on the throne. But he still focuses on the incompetency of certain policies and overall asserts that problems would have persisted had Mary lived longer than she did.



As someone planning to examine Mary's reign for my MA dissertation, I am naturally exciting about the new works and hope they will have a wide impact on scholarship not only of Mary’s reign but of sixteenth-century English religious, political and social history as a whole. But I think it will take some time for these views to be widely endorsed by certain academics and unfortunately much longer for the public as a whole to start adopting these ideas. The legend of ‘Bloody Mary’ will not go away easily.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


David Starkey’s review of Eamon Duffy, Fires of Faith: Catholic England Under Mary Tudor:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article6470578.ece


Christopher Howse’s article on Mary’s reputation and Duffy’s latest work, in the Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherhowse/5518023/Why-Queen-Mary-wanted-to-burn.html#comments

Did Jane Grey have a good claim to the throne?

On this day in 1553, Jane Grey, the great-granddaughter of Henry VII and great-niece of Henry VIII, was publicly proclaimed as queen of England in London. Amidst ‘a trompet blohying’, two heralds declared that the ‘lade Mary was unlawfully be-gotten’ thus Jane was now queen.[1]





Traditionally Edward VI’s ‘devise’ for the succession which deprived Mary and Elizabeth of the throne primarily on grounds of their illegitimacy and granted the kingdom to Jane, has been regarded as unlawful. The typical approach taken on this issue can be found in David Loades, Mary Tudor: The Tragical history of the first queen of England (2006), when he states:

‘Not only was parliamentary consent required for the change that he [Edward] was proposing, but as a minor he was not even capable of making a valid will. As the days ticked by Northumberland became increasingly desperate, even threatening violence against the obstructers. Eventually it was agreed that the only way to proceed was by letters patent, which would have to be retrospectively confirmed. Such letters were drawn up, but they never passed the seals, and thus were never properly validated, and so remained technically invalid.’ [2]

In such a narrative the actions of Edward, the duke of Northumberland and the conspirators remains highly dubious. Since Mary’s right to succeed was confirmed in a parliamentary statue (the Act of Succession of 1544, 35 Hen. VIII, c. 1), then the same administrative body was expected to be endorsed in the occasion that the monarch wished to remove Mary from the succession. Could the 1544 act be overturned just by Edward VI’s will? Or did parliament need to be included in all this?


In an article on Tudor dynastic problems, Eric Ives noted that Edward ‘was clearly copying his father’.[3] Many know of Henry VIII’s obsession with the succession that resulted in a string of marriages, and three separate parliamentary statutes explicitly concerning this subject. Cleary Henry believed that the monarch held the right to decide who his heirs should be and implement parliament to confirm this. His belief in the crown’s prerogative in matters of the succession went even further. The 1544 Act stated that the king ‘myght by the auctoritie of the saide acte give and dispose the ... crown ... by his letters patentes ... or by his last will ... to any person or persons’.[4] In other words if Henry, after endorsing parliament to confirm the succession, wished to subsequently change his heirs he had the power to make such an amendment by letters patent or in his will. In the end Henry chose to confirm the details of the 1544 act in his final will by stating again that all three of his children had a place in the succession. But he still held the power to state otherwise if he wished.

Edward's 'devise for the succession', 1553. Notice the change made on line four - after 'L Jane', Edward has inserted 'and her' so the line reads 'L Jane and her heires masles' instead of just 'L Jane heires masles'.

Although Edward laid out his succession in the ‘devise’ (which had to be modified because the first draft left the crown to Jane's ‘heirs masles’ and not actually to Jane herself), he did use letters patent to support such changes. Loades states that they were ‘never properly validated’, and certainly Edward came across opposition to his actions.[5] Nonetheless the letters patent were signed by many prominent figures in government, by judges and certain leading citizens of London.[6] But does this mean that Edward’s actions were entirely legal and that he reserved the right to change the succession purely because he was the monarch?


To argue that Edward did have the right to remove Mary and make Jane his heir is to infer that the 1544 act which allowed Henry to change his mind was a privilege that extended to subsequent monarchs. But when Henry oversaw the passing of the 1544 act did he ever intend for the clause that the monarch ‘myght by the auctoritie of the saide acte give and dispose the ... crown ... by his letters patentes ... or by his last will ... to any person or persons’ to be a power for all future kings (or queens) of England ? Or was he just concerned with himself?


Then there is another problem. Was Edward of a suitable age to make such actions? In 1544 Henry was a monarch in his fifties, who had exercised power for over thirty years. There was no outcry when he had this act passed. But Edward, though highly precocious for his age and concerned with administrative and particularly religious affairs, was only fifteen years old by the spring of 1553 and the country still had a lord president and a council that governed for him. When attempting to avoid conforming to the religious policies of her brother’s reign, Mary asserted that she would not recognise the laws owing to her brother’s tender age. For Mary, Edward’s policies were actually his councillors and she would not comply until he came of age to decide for himself. But her argument was not necessarily shared by all, and maybe Mary did not entirely endorse it. After all, Mary’s protests were all part of her attempts to avoid changing her own religious practise and to resist adopting the new policies which she regarded as heretical. It was therefore pragmatic to argue that these new laws were not legitimate and subsequently she should carry on endorsing the religious practise of her father’s reign. But many others did not show such defiance. Its notable how one contemporary judge, Edward Montagu, claimed that he had been troubled by the fact that Edward’s ‘devise’ conflicted with an act of parliament but Montagu did not state that he felt Edward was wrong in enforcing his royal will.[7] Rather, the judge argued, there were legal niceties that needed to be observed in order for Edward to go about appointing his own successors and in this circumstance they were not met. But even Montagu agreed to Edward’s changes in the end.



This post is full of questions and provides few answers. This ambiguity is caused by the fact that work on this subject is forthcoming and until publication it is hard to establish a definite position. The work in question is Eric Ives, Jane Grey: A Tudor Mystery (WileyBlackwell, Oct 2009) that is to propose that Jane had strong legal grounds for her succession. Whilst scouring the internet for any information about this study I came across the book’s table of contents. One chapter is entitled ‘The rebellion of Mary Tudor’ and relates to Mary’s accession and Jane’s downfall. It is certainly an interesting way of looking at this subject. Was Mary the rebel who overthrew Jane the queen?


Admittedly I have always perceived matters the other way around. Jane the imposter, Mary the rightful claimant. And I still question whether Edward’s actions can be regarded as legal owing to the absence of parliament in all this. Edward could of course not help the fact that his heath was rapidly declining and that he did not have the time to call parliament immediately to verify his changes. There is evidence, as Ives points out, that Montagu urged for a parliament to convene in September 1553 to authorise Edward’s actions which does indicate the importance placed upon using parliament to overturn the 1544 act and remove Mary’s right to succeed.[8] Nonetheless Ives’s future work raises interesting questions about the royal prerogative and whether Henry set a precedent for his heir to decide outside of parliament how the succession was to be determined.




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[1] The diary of Henry Machyn, citizen and merchant-taylor of London, from AD 1550 to AD 1563, ed. J. G. Nichols, CS, 42 (1848), cited from David Loades, The Chronicles of the Tudor Queens (Gloucestershire, 2002), p. 5.

[2] David Loades, Mary Tudor: The Tragical history of the first queen of England (The National Archives, 2006), p. 97.

[3] Eric Ives, ‘Tudor dynastic problems revisited’, Historical Research, 81, 212 (May 2008), p. 268.

[4] Extract from 35 Hen. VIII, c. 1), cited in Ives, ‘Tudor dynastic problems revisited’, p. 265.

[5] According to contemporary chronicler Robert Wingfield, two lawyers (John Hales, the justice of the common pleas and John Gosnold, solicitor general), opposed the scheme.

[6] Jennifer Loach, Edward VI (New Haven and London, 1999), p. 165.

[7] Ives, ‘Tudor dynastic problems revisited’, p. 269-70.

[8] Ives, ‘Tudor dynastic problems revisited’, p. 270.

Review of Judith Richards, Mary Tudor (2008)

I wanted to find a detailed, excellently written review of Judith M. Richards’s biography on Mary. Unfortunately such reviews have been published in journals which, though I can access, I am not allowed to post elsewhere owing to tedious copyright issues! So I have decided not to be lazy and have written my own review. Needless to say it is not of the calibre of the others!


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Judith M. Richards, Mary Tudor (Routledge, London and New York, 2008)



In 1557 the Venetian ambassador, Giovanni Michiel, wrote a lengthy report on the appearance and personality of Queen Mary I, that has become a valuable source in the examination of this figure. Mary was, he claimed, a woman of ‘wonderful grandeur and dignity, knowing what became the dignity of a sovereign as well as any of the most consummate statesmen in her service’. Yet despite such praise Michiel still argued that because Mary was ‘of a sex which cannot becomingly take more than a moderate part’ in administrative affairs, she must have therefore taken a more passive role in government. The ambassador’s claims show us the prejudice that Mary as a female ruler encountered throughout her reign, problems which Richards explores exceptionally well in this work.


Richard’s biography is superb in analysing the subject of female rule in the sixteenth-century and in the context of the reign of Mary Tudor. Previous work on English female rule has focused almost predominately on Elizabeth I. Yet as Richards identifies, Mary preceded Elizabeth and successful met challenges including attempting to curb the power of her consort, Philip of Spain. Richards effectively pushes aside the traditional notion of a weak-willed Mary who was under her husband’s thumb. Instead Mary appears as a ruler who was very wary of others encroaching upon her authority.


Aside from the useful discussions on queenship, there is also a revised and in-depth analysis of Mary’s faith and religious policies. Richards rejects the notion that Mary was the blindly devoted Catholic of Protestant myth. Instead Mary actually encountered problems with the papacy and ultimately defied the pope by refusing to send Cardinal Reginald Pole back to Rome so he may be tried on charges of heresy. As Richards notes, ‘her obedience to the Holy Father was always tempted by a strong sense of the proper limitations of papal authority within her kingdom’ (p.218). Overall subtle comparisons between Mary and her father Henry VIII, are made. It has never been popular to consider that the pair had much in common, particularly in regards to religion. But as Richards shows, Mary was also favourable to the English Bible having encouraged the preparation of another during her reign. She also agreed with the Henrician settlement on certain points; for example she and Henry were in agreement on the subject of clerical celibacy and the absolute necessity of recognising the real presence at the mass. And of course both conflicted with the papacy, albeit in varying degrees.


Mary’s relationship with France is covered well, and Richards presents the image of a queen who faced a rather hostile and often unreasonable French monarch. Richards implies that part of Henri II’s disdain was over Mary’s sex, reinforcing further the tribulations Mary faced as a queen regnant. Richards also argues that when England did go to war with the French, something historians have attacked as absolutely disastrous, there was a significant degree of support in England for the move. The biography also illustrates the alleged and genuine frustrations the English government had with the French prior to the declaration of war that indicates that decision to enter conflict was not solely or even mainly to do with support for the Hapsburgs.


However the biography is not without faults. I would have liked a larger section on the Marian persecutions as owing to its controversy and the fact that for many it has defined Mary and her reign, it is therefore a subject that needs much analysis. But perhaps Richards was making a point with the fact that only ten pages in her book are specifically dedicated to this. Her use of comparisons, between Mary’s reign and the rest of Catholic Europe (and Protestant Europe), and with the reign of Elizabeth I, was very useful. Arguably she could have gone further in such comparisons in her general argument that the Marian burnings were not incredibly unique. Overall Richards clearly indicates Mary’s role in the burnings and reveals an image of a queen who was actively involved in the policies of her reign. I think this is important to assert as Mary is a figure that can be liable to (and has actually been) represented in an extremely malicious or even very saintly fashion, both such views being gross exaggerations. Instead, as Richards shows us, she was an active sixteenth-century monarch like her father and her sister and just as we must recognise her participation in the successes of her reign, so we must identify her role in the actions which we are repulsed by.


In her own review of this book, Dr Lucy Wooding argued that more detail could have been included on the last three years of Mary’s reign. This is a valid point as some things are skipped over. If I am not mistaken Richards failed to mention the formation of the Muscovy Company in 1555, which marked significant trade links between England and Russia. Overall Ireland and Wales are rarely (if ever in regards to the latter) mentioned in this work.


Despite these criticisms, Judith Richards work on Mary is an engrossing, innovative study which has enriched scholarship on this period and will be extremely useful for historians and students of this era. It is a shame that this book has not received much publicity, whilst another and less superior recent biography on Mary has. This book, though useful for academics, is also accessible for those who know little about Mary and her reign and want a well written and fascinating biography. It lacks the syrupy sentimental language of popular history books, yet still provides us with excellent detail about Mary’s private life and character as well as the politics of her reign.

Medal commemorating the restoration of England to Catholic Communion, 1554 – and possibly Mary’s ‘pregnancy’?

In November 1554, England was officially received back to the Catholic Church. It was the moment Mary had been waiting for and to have this officially confirmed by Cardinal Reginald Pole, a leading churchman, Englishman and close friend of Mary’s, made the event even more significant. It was that month that Pole, after nearly twenty years of exile, returned to England as the papal legate. Mary wished to install him as her archbishop of Canterbury although Thomas Cranmer was still alive at this point thus Mary had to wait till his execution to bestow this on Pole. Nonetheless she did reverse the act of attainder that has been passed against him during Henry VIII’s reign in the parliament that met on the 12th November 1554 [1]. On the 22nd November, Pole landed at Whitehall, having travelled in the royal barge, and met Mary on the steps of the palace. She was accompanied by her new husband Philip and ‘she received him with great signs of respect and affection; both shed tears’ (Porter, p. 331).





The medal depicted here was struck to commemorate England’s return to Rome and Pole’s arrival in England to instigate this. Pole formally absolved the realm of past transgressions on St Andrew’s Day, 30th November, and the ceremony was greeted with much solemnity and emotion by Mary, Philip and the Commons. Mary had achieved the restoration of the old religious order; in the words of her biographer, David Loades, it ‘must have been the greatest moment of her life’ (p. 240). The medal captures this personal triumph.


The medal, made by the Paduan medallist Giovanni Cavino in 1554, depicts an allegorical scene. The symbolic figure of Anglia is depicted knelling before the pope and raising her hand forth, which he supports. By her is Pole wearing full cardinal attire, and to the right of Pole is the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who was Mary’s cousin, father-in-law and protector throughout much of her life. Charles had been deeply involved in organising Mary’s marriage to his son Philip and in supporting Mary’s decision to restore England to the Catholic Church, which resulted in his presence on the medal. To the right are Mary and Philip, both crowned. Mary’s eyes remain fixed on Anglia, whilst Charles and Philip look pleasantly on at Mary. Above the whole group are the words ‘ANGLIA RESURGES’ – ‘England, you shall arise’.


On the reverse of the medal is an image of Pope Julius III, the contemporary pope, who Mary enjoyed good relations with. Julius had confirmed Pole’s appointment to England and although he initially pressed for former monastic lands to be resorted to the Church, he eventually conceded that ‘it would be far better for all reasons human and divine, to abandon all the Church property [in England], rather than risk the shipwreck of this understanding’ (Whitelock, p. 247). Unfortunately for Mary, a prosperous relationship with the papacy would eventually cease in the last years of her reign owing to the anti-Habsburg policies of Paul IV. [2]


The commemorative tone of the medal is notable. However there is another message, one which is subtle and hopeful. This can be seen in the figure of Mary. Although it is hard to completely establish Mary’s physique owing to the baggy nature of her dress, it is evident that she is depicted with a round stomach which she draws attention by laying her hand upon. All books that I have come across that include an image of this medal overlook the possibility that the medal is also drawing attention to Mary’s ‘pregnancy’ of 1554/1555. Yet it was around the time of the ceremonies which installed England back to the Catholic Church that Mary confirmed her condition. Personal confirmation came on the very day when she greeted Pole on the steps of Whitehall. His first words upon seeing her were, ‘Hail, thou art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed are thou among women’. Pole later retired and was subsequently greeted by one of Mary’s messengers who claimed that the queen had felt the child in her womb quicken when Pole had spoken the words to her. Quickening, the first moments of the child in the womb, was regarded as a confirmation of pregnancy in the early modern period and also a sign that the child was still alive. For Mary, the possibility of a Catholic heir was a joyous prospect and meant the security of her religious policies. Hence allusions to her pregnancy were entirely appropriate on a medal celebrating England’s return to the Catholic Church. Her condition was made widely known by the end of that month, again indicating the possibility that this medal, created near the end of that year, was purposely drawing attention to her pregnancy.


Unfortunately for Mary, the joy turned to despair when the pregnancy revealed itself to be fake in the summer of 1555 [3]. And with this came significant concerns about the succession and thus the sustainability of her religious policies. However references to the future worries about the succession that would plague the rest of Mary’s reign are practically nonexistent in this insightful medal from Mary’s Annus Mirabilis.




The medal has been recently included in Eamon Duffy, Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor (New Haven and London, 2009), plate 4.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[1] The bill of attainder against Reginald Pole was passed on the 19th May 1539. In January of that year his brother, Henry, Baron Montagu had been executed for allegedly plotting against Henry VIII (and he too was included in the bill along with their mother, Margaret Pole). Reginald Pole was in the Observant Franciscan house of Montili at Carpentras when this occurred.

[2] Divisions between Paul IV and Mary were also created when the Pope pressed for Pole to be sent to Rome to be tried on charges of heresy. Mary ultimately refused and her refusal to do so contributed to Paul IV’s demonstrations of gratification when he learnt of her death in November 1558.

[3] Limited work has been done into Mary’s ‘pregnancies’, although historians mostly agree that she suffered from cases of pseudocyesis, otherwise known as ‘phantom pregnancy’, whereby an individual exhibits signs of pregnancy but is ultimately not pregnant. For an interesting discussion into the possible biological and psychological causes of this see Judith Richards, Mary Tudor (Oxon, 2008), p. 173.




References

Eamon Duffy, Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor (New Haven and London, 2009), pp. 43-5, plate 4.
David Loades, Mary Tudor: A Life (Oxford, 1992), pp. 237-40.
Linda Porter, Mary Tudor: The First Queen (London, 2007), p. 331-33.
Judith Richards, Mary Tudor (Oxon, 2008), pp. 169-73.
Anna Whitelock, Mary Tudor: England’s First Queen (London, 2009), pp. 247-53.

The case of Perotine Massey

Perotine Massey is not a familiar name to many. When we think of the Protestants persecuted during Mary’s reign we often reflect on the prominent victims like Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury. Perotine was no one ‘special’. So why is she, or more accurately her death, so controversial? Is it because she was a woman? No – women could be arraigned and condemned for a variety of crimes and Perotine was certainly not the first nor the last female burnt for heresy in England. Was it her status? Again no, for she was from a modest background as were numerous other martyrs. So what made Perotine controversial? The answer is that she was pregnant at the time of her death.




Here are the details on Perotine supplied by John Foxe in his Book of Martyrs. She was the daughter of one Katherine Cauches (or ‘Cowchen’) and she lived with her mother and one sister called Guillemine in St Peter Port, Guernsey. A woman in her community had stolen a silver cup and tried to sell it to Perotine but knowing that it was actually the property of anther, Perotine informed the actual cup’s owner. The thief was arrested and Perotine was also questioned for any impossible involvement in the robbery. Sufficient evidence could not be found for her involvement but she was instead accused of not attending church. Was she perhaps accused by the disgruntled thief? Regardless, the case was brought to the dean of Guernsey and on 14th July 1556 she was examined before a number of local important figures (amongst them the dean). Either on the 17th or the 27th July she was condemned as a heretic, and burnt at the stake. She was strangled beforehand but the rope broke. Whilst on the stake she gave birth to a boy and one eyewitness (a ‘W. House’) initially saved the baby but the bailiff, Helier Gosselin, insisted that it too should die. As a consequence the infant was thrust into the flames.


It is a horrifying story. But is it true – and if so why did they still execute her and why, when she gave birth at the stake, did they not save the baby?

And if it is false, why invent such a story in the first place?


Reasons as to why the story was mentioned – or even invented – by Foxe is obvious. The murder of a newborn infant was regarded as heinous to contemporaries, as it does to us, thus those responsible for this were cast as unjust and brutal. This is exactly the manner in which the Protestant Foxe wished to present Mary and the Catholic Church. But that does not necessarily mean he invented it. Not all of what Foxe recorded was inaccurate – no one doubts, for example, that Cranmer was sent to the stake even after recanting his Protestant beliefs regardless of the fact that his recantation should have saved him.

The issue of the pregnancy though raises questions. During the early modern period there was a plea known as ‘benefit of belly’. This was where a pregnant woman who had been condemned to death could raise her condition and as such the execution would be stalled until after the child’s birth. The existence of this plea indicates that the unborn child was not regarded as culpable of its mother’s sins and as such was not to share her fate. She could still remain in prison, and in most cases she was not guaranteed a full pardon. But nonetheless the child was still to live.






So why was Perotine sent to the scaffold? Perhaps her pregnancy was not known to herself or to the officials. Pregnancy in the early stages was hard to determine with much certainty during the sixteenth-century, and obvious signs like the cessation of menstruation could be regarded instead as a symptom of a general ailment. If the female criminal was pregnant she needed to raise the condition first and then be examined. But if she did not know of her pregnancy then she could not do this. There was also the possibility that she could tell the officials of this, be examined by a groups of matrons and have her pregnancy denied. This may sound odd to us but there are cases of women being sent to the scaffold although they claiming to be pregnant but were declared not to be so by others. Cathy McClive records the death of one female criminal who was hanged and dissected in 1666 outside the Louvre. The woman had previously pleaded that she was pregnant but this was overruled. The crowd was said to have been shocked when during the execution it was discovered that she was had been around four months pregnant.

According to Jasper Ridley in Bloody Mary’s Martyrs (2001), Perotine did not tell the judges at her trial that she was pregnant although it is hard to deduce whether this was consciously done or whether she really didn’t know about her condition. But why did the bailiff, once the child was born, decide to condemn the child with the mother? The bailiff was asked the same question years later during the reign of Elizabeth I. He was tried for his actions and his response was that the child had been in the woman’s (and therefore the ‘heretic’s’) womb and therefore shared her sin. This was not regarded to be a just reason and subsequently he was condemned for murder. But Elizabeth pardoned him.


In my opinion the story of Perotine would have made many uneasy because regardless whether the contemporary was Catholic or Protestant the death of a newborn infant was viewed as unacceptable. The charges were so damning that one Catholic writer and Elizabethan exile, Thomas Harding stressed that she had not told the judges at her trial that she was pregnant and had she done so she would have not been sent to the stake. Importantly he did not deny that Perotine had existed or that had given birth at the stake; rather he was challenging the idea that the Catholic Church had anything to do with the death.


The case of Perotine reveals certain problems within the system of persecuting heretics during Mary’s reign. Mary and leading Church officials could of course not involve themselves in every case of heresy – this had to be left to local officials. Therefore the system rested on the belief that local officials could oversee the burnings in a correct and appropriate manner. But as Linda Porter in her biography on Mary notes, ‘some local administrative and justices were as zealous as individuals in pursuing heretics’ and as such the system was capable to be abused (p.361).


So does that mean that Mary is not to blame for the death of Perotine or any other cases of abuse within the system? Should we blame instead zealous officials like the Guernsey bailiff? It is hard to decree that Mary was directly responsible for this case and we have no idea whether she was even informed of it. It is true that she was not there to personally administer the death of the child and it is extremely unlikely that she, along with most contemporaries, would have issued the death of an infant. But before we put the case down to the corruption of those directly involved, it must be remembered that there did exist those close to the political centre that urged caution. Amongst them was the Franciscan friar Alfonso de Castro, who was part of Philip of Spain’s household. Whilst he was a supporter of the method of burning heretics, Castro urged that time needed to be taken to convert the Protestants – in essence that burning should be the final option and the authorities should spend as much time as possible trying to make the person recant. In other words it was not to be a rushed affair, like the case of Perotine.



So Perotine did exist and today a plaque in her honour (along with her mother and sister who were burnt alongside her) can be seen on the Tower Hill steps in St Peter’s Port. She may not have been the most famous Marian martyr, and today her name is frequently left out of books on Mary and the church during this period. But her story was regarded as important enough for Foxe to raise it and for Harding to attack. Ultimately I don’t perceive the case of Perotine to be an example of Mary’s supposed brutality, nor do I think it is fair to use such situations to form a complete judgment of Mary’s church. But speaking as someone who favours a more balanced portrayal of Mary and her church, I wonder whether it is not amiss to ignore certain flaws of the system just as it is illogical to deny this queen of any achievements.



References

John Foxe, Acts and Monuments. Available from: http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/johnfoxe/index.html

Cathy McClive, ‘The Hidden Truths of the Belly: The Uncertainties of Pregnancy in Early Modern Europe’, Social History of Medicine 15:2 (2002).
Glyn Redworth, ‘Castro, Alfonso de (c.1495–1558)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Jasper Ridley, Bloody Mary’s Martyrs (London, 2001), pp. 152-3.
Linda Porter, Mary Tudor: The First Queen (London, 2007), pp. 350-62.