Mary Tudor (20 page)
Authors: Linda Porter
Aware that there might not be many such chances to appeal directly to her father, Mary asked for leave to come and kiss his hand. This was refused, but still she was not to be entirely thwarted. She must, at least, make sure he saw her, so that he would retain in his mind the imprint of a gesture of submissiveness. ‘When the king was going to mount his horse she went on to a terrace at the top of the house to see him. The king, either being told of it, or by chance, turned round, and seeing her on her knees with her hands joined, bowed to her and put his hand to his hat.’
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This courtly response was second nature to Henry VIII, but it did not mean that his heart was melted. His ambivalence remained. He told the French ambassador that he had not spoken to the princess because of her obstinacy, which came from her Spanish blood.Yet when the ambassador politely remarked that Mary had been very well brought up, ‘the tears came into his eyes and he could not refrain from praising her’. But he continued to heed his wife’s concerns. Mary did not see her father again for more than two and a half years.
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This courtly response was second nature to Henry VIII, but it did not mean that his heart was melted. His ambivalence remained. He told the French ambassador that he had not spoken to the princess because of her obstinacy, which came from her Spanish blood.Yet when the ambassador politely remarked that Mary had been very well brought up, ‘the tears came into his eyes and he could not refrain from praising her’. But he continued to heed his wife’s concerns. Mary did not see her father again for more than two and a half years.
Anne Boleyn got her way. She succeeded in keeping them apart and never wavered from this course. A more subtle woman might have considered outmanoeuvring Mary by occasionally bringing her to court, treating her with kindness and consideration and letting her show the world that, if she continued to defy her father, she was just a sulky, jealous child and a disobedient daughter. The new queen, who liked to be the centre of attention, feared Mary too much to follow such a strategy. Their meetings during Anne’s reign, though few, followed a predictable course. Anne attempted to reason with Mary, holding out the promise of better treatment; Mary invariably responded with scathing rudeness, as only someone brought up as a princess could;Anne, her temper barely in check at most times, then got very angry indeed. But the moral victory was clear. It was always Mary’s. A striking example of this is their confrontation in March 1534, when Anne had gone to Hatfield to see Elizabeth.‘She urgently solicited the princess to visit her and honour her as queen, saying that it would be a means of reconciliation with the king, and she herself would intercede with him for her, and she would be as well or better treated than ever.’ Mary’s response was icy:‘she knew no queen in England except her mother’, but if ‘madame Anne Boleyn’ would speak to her father on her behalf, she would be much obliged. Anne tried again, to no effect, ‘and in the end threatened her’, but Mary was unmoved.
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It did her no good. Her defiance clouded her judgement and led to humiliation. Lacking any other form of protest, obstruction was the only course she could follow.This caused her to concentrate on the distinction between herself and Elizabeth; she was absolutely determined not to recognise the child’s superior status.This resolution went to the core of her being. Sometimes it gave rise to tantrums that may have been deliberately calculated, as well as providing an outlet for venting frustrations. At the end of March, Elizabeth’s household removed from Hatfield and Mary refused to accompany Anne Shelton in the litter provided for their transport.To follow after Elizabeth would have meant an acknowledgement of her precedence and this Mary was adamant she must avoid. Eventually, one of the gentlemen present had to lift her up and put her bodily in the litter. Often portrayed as an act of gratuitous violence, it may have actually suited Mary quite well.‘She made a public protestation of the compulsion used and that her act should not prejudice her right and title.’ She would do this whenever she could. Still, it seems ignominious and Chapuys disapproved.‘I should not have advised the princess to have gone to this extreme, for fear of irritating her father and consequently suffering worse treatment’.
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Her treatment remained about the same, with Henry’s outlook being more generous at some times than others. For Mary and her mother there was an empty triumph when the pope finally ruled in Katherine’s favour in April. Henry was personally angered but it merely confirmed his determination to deny Rome any further role in English affairs.The pope was a distant figure without authority, his pronouncements no longer recognised in England. There was already a new Act of Succession with an oath attached that required all to acknowledge the Boleyn marriage. This placed a further burden on Mary, though she was not forced to take the oath immediately. Any respite she enjoyed was only temporary and the pressure on her, and members of her former household, was maintained. Lady Anne Hussey, wife of Mary’s chamberlain, was questioned in the Tower of London about her contact with Mary ‘since she lost the name of princess’, and whether she had continued to refer to Mary by her title. In July, Anne Boleyn’s father, the earl of Wiltshire, pressed Mary to renounce her title, promising that, if she did, the king ‘would treat her better than she could wish’. Still, Mary held firm.
There was, however, a price to be paid for her principles. Few people could have come unscathed through the trauma and stress that Mary had suffered. Her world had collapsed, shrunk to a handful of faithful servants and the letters of a desperate mother and a largely powerless imperial representative. Nobody else dared to acknowledge her any longer as a princess.The fear of execution was already there. God alone knew what lay in the future. As the summer came to an end, Mary became seriously ill. Her sickness continued, at varying intervals, over the next two years. Poor health was something Mary had endured since her mid-teens, but this was more severe, more alarming than anything seen before. Chapuys decided to make a major fuss. Mary must not be neglected. He appealed directly to the king and Henry responded by sending his own physician.
On 2 September, Dr William Butts reported to Cromwell on his examination of Mary:
I came to my Lady Mary this day at 7 o’clock, whom I find in a mean state of health,
but at the beginning of her old disease
[emphasis added]. I have caused her mother’s physician to be sent for, with the apothecary. The cause of this rumour by the ambassador, as I can learn, comes of two things: that she [Mary] being diseased in her head and stomach, my lady Shelton sent for Mr Michael, who gave her pills, after which she was very sick and he so much troubled that he said he would never minister anything to her alone; and thus signified sharply to the ambassador.
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This brief note indicates that Mary, probably suffering from bad headaches and stomach cramps at the start of her period, had been so unwell that Lady Shelton decided to see whether she could get her some medication to ease the discomfort. Mary then suffered a severe reaction to the pills prescribed by the apothecary and was very nauseous. The apothecary, afraid that he would be accused of poisoning the princess, was thoroughly alarmed, as no doubt was Lady Shelton.
It is significant that Katherine of Aragon’s doctor was also consulted by Dr Butts. One of the arguments that Katherine used to try to get permission for Mary to join her was that she could cure her illness:‘The comfort and cheerfulness she would have with me would be half her cure. I have found this by experience, being ill of the same sickness.’ She repeated this request in 1535, saying that she would nurse Mary in her own bed. The queen did not get her wish, but the involvement of her doctor in Mary’s treatment in September helped. Restrictions were applied, however, even in these circumstances. The physicians were not allowed to speak to Mary without witnesses and they were to converse only in English. Nowhere was the precise nature of the illness spelled out. Current medical opinion suggests that Mary suffered from dysmenhorrea (acute period pain).This may have been linked to endometriosis or other conditions such as ovarian cysts, but a precise diagnosis is impossible, given the very fragmentary nature of the evidence. At the time, a mixture of ignorance and embarrassment surrounded the topic.
Mary recovered by the end of the month, but was subjected to recurring bouts of indisposition for the rest of the year and throughout 1535. Though these may have all been caused by her gynaecological condition they were undoubtedly made worse by stress. Dr Butts himself made this clear to the king, when he told Henry that ‘her illness arose only from sorrow and trouble; and that she would be well at once if she were free to do as she liked’.
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This frank assessment troubled the king, who ‘heaved a great sigh, saying that it was a great misfortune that she remained so obstinate, and that she took from him all occasion to treat her as well as he would’. But Henry was ambivalent in his attitude, and the opinion of his medical man that Mary’s health problems, no matter how nasty, were partly self-inflicted was not calculated to bring anything other than a temporary remission of pressure. When Dr Butts boldly advocated sending Mary to her mother, the king was firm in his refusal to countenance such an idea.There would be no way of getting her to renounce her title and claim if he gave way. It was distressing, but the solution was entirely up to Mary herself.
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This frank assessment troubled the king, who ‘heaved a great sigh, saying that it was a great misfortune that she remained so obstinate, and that she took from him all occasion to treat her as well as he would’. But Henry was ambivalent in his attitude, and the opinion of his medical man that Mary’s health problems, no matter how nasty, were partly self-inflicted was not calculated to bring anything other than a temporary remission of pressure. When Dr Butts boldly advocated sending Mary to her mother, the king was firm in his refusal to countenance such an idea.There would be no way of getting her to renounce her title and claim if he gave way. It was distressing, but the solution was entirely up to Mary herself.
There were times when Mary experienced relief from her symptoms and then she appeared in surprisingly good health and spirits. During 1534, Chapuys saw her twice, each time at a distance. In the late summer, he saw her when she came to Greenwich and commented on her striking appearance: ‘It was a great pleasure to see such excellent beauty accompanied by heroic bearing.’ This was shortly before she became seriously ill, but at the end of October he saw her again.The restrictions on her freedom of movement were temporarily lifted, and she had arranged to be rowed along the Thames, so that Chapuys could see her from his house ‘in the fields by the river between Greenwich and this town’. He reported that she was in good health and seemed to be happy and very cheerful.
Perhaps some of this was bravura, a performance put on to demonstrate to her cousin the emperor that, as a true princess, she was not cowed by months of harassment. Or maybe she was genuinely pleased to be out on the water and to glide in tranquillity for a while. It was only a brief respite and it changed nothing. The king and his daughter remained at loggerheads. The French ambassador even reported that Henry ‘hates her [Mary] thoroughly’, and another French diplomat, visiting London on a special mission with the admiral of France, added that the English king was unrepentant in his attitude. Mary was in his power, and would remain so. There was no chance of her becoming queen or claiming any right to the throne.
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While it is important to remember that Henry wanted to give the impression to the French that Mary counted for nothing (there was already discussion of a marriage between Elizabeth and the third son of Francis I), he never budged from his original position. Mary would be brought to submission. It was never a question of if, only of when.
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While it is important to remember that Henry wanted to give the impression to the French that Mary counted for nothing (there was already discussion of a marriage between Elizabeth and the third son of Francis I), he never budged from his original position. Mary would be brought to submission. It was never a question of if, only of when.
During 1534 and the following year, Mary watched with growing fearfulness as her father, determined to assert his newly gained authority as head of the Church in England, sent political and religious opponents to their deaths. First to suffer were Elizabeth Barton and those closest to her.The Nun of Kent was made to confess that she was a fraud, manipulated by others. She was hanged and beheaded at Tyburn. The religious orders that had supported Katherine, especially the Carthusians, fared even worse, suffering the horrible traitors’ death of hanging, drawing and quartering. The steadfast Bishop Fisher, her only true champion among the clergy, died on the block, his body emaciated from sorrow and imprisonment. ‘From age and suffering he was more like a shadow than a man’ was the comment of an Italian on his execution.This courageous and honourable churchman was as good as dead already, but Henry wanted his head. He also wanted that of his former chancellor. Thomas More famously put his God before his king and so earned himself a golden place in history.
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Mary and Katherine, in common with much of Europe, were horrified. In Chapuys’ dispatches there is almost an air of disbelief about what was going on in England. It was from this time that Mary began to contemplate escaping to the safety of the imperial court. The notion recurred again at times of crisis, but it appears to have been more of a fantasy than a realistic option. Chapuys dutifully thought about it, but concluded that it would be very difficult. Mary’s health continued to be erratic and Cromwell repeated his view that the death of the princess ‘would do little harm’. Such a coldly pragmatic observation from the king’s closest adviser made Chapuys very uneasy. No doubt this was the intention.
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Mary and Katherine, in common with much of Europe, were horrified. In Chapuys’ dispatches there is almost an air of disbelief about what was going on in England. It was from this time that Mary began to contemplate escaping to the safety of the imperial court. The notion recurred again at times of crisis, but it appears to have been more of a fantasy than a realistic option. Chapuys dutifully thought about it, but concluded that it would be very difficult. Mary’s health continued to be erratic and Cromwell repeated his view that the death of the princess ‘would do little harm’. Such a coldly pragmatic observation from the king’s closest adviser made Chapuys very uneasy. No doubt this was the intention.
In one respect, however, Henry was still unsuccessful; the original impetus for all this bloodshed and upheaval remained. There was no male heir. Unknown to Mary, Anne Boleyn miscarried in the summer of 1534. It would be more than a year before she conceived again.
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