Mary Tudor (12 page)

1. Mary from a group portrait of Henry VIII and his family, painted in about 1545. The female figure in the background is supposed to be her jester, Jane the Fool.

2. Princess Elizabeth from the same family group, aged about ten. The figure in the background is supposed to be Henry’s jester, Will Somers.

3. Princess Elizabeth at about the time of her father’s death, aged twelve. By an unknown artist, in the Royal Collection.

4. Edward VI from the same family group as illustrations 1 and 2.

5. Holbein’s design for a jewelled pendant for Mary, probably executed during his first visit to England in 1527–8, when Mary was still the king’s heir.

6. Margaret Tudor, Mary’s aunt. She married James IV of Scotland, and after his death at Flodden in 1513, remarried Archibald, Earl of Angus. She was the grandmother of Mary, Queen of Scots. From a drawing by an unknown artist.

7. Lady Jane Dudley (Grey). Put up by Edward as an alternative to Mary for the succession, she was defeated in July 1553, and executed after the Wyatt rising in February 1554, at the age of seventeen.

8. Edward’s ‘Device’ for the succession, naming Jane Grey as his heir. The document is in the king’s hand throughout, except for the amendments, which make all the difference to its meaning.

9. A page from Edward VI’s journal, for 18 March 1551, in which he refers to Mary and his dispute with her over the mass.

10. A later pastiche of Henry VIII and Mary, based on portraits by Holbein and Hans Eworth. The figure in the background is again Will Somers.

11. Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1546. A painting by Gerhard Flicke in the National Portrait Gallery.

12. Mary at the age of twenty-eight (in 1543), by the sergeant painter known as ‘Master John’. In the National Portrait Gallery.