Bloody Mary (29 page)

As learned women Mary and her new stepmother shared a special bond. They belonged to that growing company of noblewomen that the scholar Nicholas Udall described as “given to the study of devout science and of strange tongues.” Catherine’s treatise
The Prayers stirring the Mind unto Heavenly Meditations
appeared two years after she became queen, and among her other projects was a translation of Erasmus’
Paraphrases on the Four Gospels.
Udall served as editor of the book, and Mary was one of the translators; the queen financed its publication.

A Spanish visitor to Henry’s court in 1544, just before Mary’s twenty-eighth birthday, left a description of his meeting with the queen and princess in the queen’s apartments. He was the duke de Najera, a soldier in the service of the Emperor Charles, who on his way back to Spain came to pay his respects to the English king. The duke wanted to see at first hand this amazing prince, who, he noted, had ordered more executions of those who opposed his opinions than any other ruler “Christian or infidel.”

Arriving at Greenwich the Spaniard was escorted through three large halls hung with tapestry. The first was empty, the second held two long rows of halberdiers of the king’s bodyguard in red livery, and the third, the presence chamber, was full of sumptuously dressed nobles, gentlemen and knights. All of these courtiers paid reverence to an empty chair of estate whose customary occupant was nowhere to be seen. The king never did come into the presence chamber—because he feared assassination, the duke conjectured—but in time the Spaniard and two of his companions were summoned into Henry’s inner chamber. After an audience of half an hour the visitor was taken to the queen’s apartments, where he found Catherine, Mary and Henry’s niece Margaret Douglas flanked by dozens of gentlewomen and other attendants. Although Catherine was “a little indisposed” she wanted to dance “for the honor of the company,” and,
taking as her partner her brother William Parr, she led a measure “very gracefully.” Then Mary, Margaret Douglas and the others danced, and a Venetian of the royal household danced some galliards with the spectacular agility the king had displayed twenty years earlier. After several hours of this pastime the duke took his leave. He kissed the queen’s hand and turned to kiss Mary’s, but she offered her lips instead—a gracious familiarity usually reserved for relatives or those of equal rank. In all he found both the queen and princess to be agreeable in their looks, dress and manners, and the impression left by his account is of an orderly court, centered on an increasingly inactive king yet enlivened and ornamented by two distinguished and accomplished women. Catherine was only four years older than Mary, and if as Chapuys noted she “did her all the favor she could,” it was more as a friend than as a stepmother.
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The calm, harmonious atmosphere the duke de Najera observed at court filled Mary’s life as a whole during her father’s final years. Apart from occasional periods of illness, including an episode of what Chapuys called “colic,” she lived the uneventful life of a royal favorite, haunted as ever by the seeming impossibility of marriage but outwardly content within the intimate circle of her women and household staff. She was an advocate for present and former servants in their lawsuits and property settlements. She saw her officials Charles Morley and John Conway well set up with rents and lands, and when her gentleman usher of the chamber, Robert Chichester, married Agnes Philip she arranged for the couple to receive lands and a manor in Suffolk by a royal patent. For her favored gentlewoman Susan Clarencieux she obtained first an annuity of thirteen pounds a year and later the manor of Chevenhall.

Mary’s contacts outside the court widened during these years. A Spanish nobleman wrote to ask her about an impostor who was traveling through England on the strength of a forged letter of recommendation in the nobleman’s name. An Aragonese noblewoman who heard of Mary’s fondness for Spanish gloves sent her ten pairs, with a letter. And Princess Mary, daughter of King Emanuel of Portugal, wrote to say she had heard so much about Mary’s “virtue and learning” that she hoped they might exchange letters and literary works from time to time. Whenever a messenger was available, she assured Mary, she would try to write again.
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Mary’s answers to these correspondents were brief and formal. Often she dictated them to be written by others, when the headaches or illness or exhaustion of which she complained made it impossible for her to write herself. Despite the opportunities that now presented themselves for contacts of a more expansive kind Mary preferred to turn her energies inward, above all toward her father. She stood beside him at christenings; she was in his sickroom when he took to his bed. Like Catherine she thought a good deal about his comfort and about how to please him.
In the fall of 1543 she ordered work to begin on the most unusual New Year’s gift he would ever receive. She had a joiner build him an enormous chair, big enough to accommodate his girth, and had it upholstered in fine cloth. She hired a French embroiderer, Guillaume Brellont, to decorate it, and paid eighteen pounds for his elaborate designs and skilled craftsmanship.
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Next to his chair of state, Henry must have valued Mary’s gift as much as he did his golden walking stick or the stool on which he set his tortured leg.

In the spring of 1544 Henry rose above the limitations of his age, bulk and afflictions to lead his army to war against the French. It was agreed that he and his ally Charles would each equip more than forty thousand men and bring them to Calais and the Champagne frontier, respectively. Then Charles’ men would advance through Champagne along the Marne to Paris, while Henry’s forces would make their way south through Artois to meet them there. When he heard that Charles was to lead his army himself Henry made up his mind to do the same. He was still the envious, fiercely competitive monarch he had been a quarter of a century earlier. He considered it “a part of honor to do what the emperor does,” Chapuys wrote, and he begrudged Charles his slight advantage in age and his long experience in campaigning.

Henry’s advisers were dismayed at his decision. Even in the comfort of his palace his “chronic disease and great obesity” required “particular care.” How could he survive in a military camp, living in an unheated tent, eating and drinking rough food, vulnerable to extremes of weather and to all the hazards of warfare besides? Even if he survived these rigors, and the fatigue they brought, how could he ride into battle when he was reported to be “so weak on his legs that he could hardly stand?”
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Everyone around Henry tried to dissuade him from going, both for the sake of his health and because he promised to present the worst kind of liability to the armies in the field. His commanders, Norfolk and Suffolk, threw up their hands; the emperor sent two envoys to urge him to change his plans, but without success. The only way out seemed to be for Charles to hand over command to one of his generals and retire from the campaign himself, allowing Henry to back out without dishonor. But this solution would impugn the emperor’s vigor and ability, and was unthinkable.

In confident disregard of the fears of everyone connected with the venture Henry continued his preparations for war. Some years earlier he had ordered cast the largest guns ever made in England; now he hired two foreign gunsmiths, Peter Bawd and Peter van Colin, to make mortars and shells. Ten warships, with the flagship the
Great Harry,
were loaded with the cast-iron pieces and other guns, hackbuts, pikes, baggage
wagons and horse harness. Each ship carried hundreds of men, their horses, and much of their food. The beer brewers were told to keep a certain number of vessels loaded with filled casks, ready to sail with the fleet when the call came. To assure a plentiful supply of bread, the other staple of the army on the march, Henry ordered mills for grinding grain to be mounted on wagons, and constructed in such a way that they ground as the wheels of the wagon turned. There were portable ovens too, to be carried on wagons behind the mills.

Finally in June the “king’s great army on the sea” moved out into the Channel, augmented by long oared vessels of Henry’s own design whose deadly guns were placed for maximum advantage against the French galleys. The main force under Norfolk and Suffolk crossed first; Henry followed. He had decided to split his forces into three contingents, leaving the most burdensome objectives to his two commanders. Norfolk, with a singularly ill-equipped army, would besiege Montreuil; Suffolk, with an army that included two hundred seasoned Spanish troops under Beltrá n de la Cueva, was sent to take Boulogne. Henry would skirmish with the French in the vicinity of his headquarters at Calais.

He rode out of the city, “armed at all pieces” and mounted on a great courser, on July 25. Mounted drummers, fifers and trumpeters preceded him, and behind him a knight carried his headpiece and spear. The violent thunderstorm that drenched the camp that night left him undaunted. He rode and marched like a young man during the following days, and made the thirty-mile journey from Calais to Boulogne in a single hard day of riding. He spent long hours in the fields, looking over the lay of the ground and planning where to put his troops and guns. He even found time and energy to keep a journal. To the amazement of his men, his captains and the diplomats who watched his every move this arduous life seemed to rejuvenate Henry. After weeks of campaigning he appeared to be in better health than when he started out, and more determined than ever to remain in personal command. All his life, he told the imperial agent De Courrieres, he had been “a prince of honor and virtue, who never contravened his word.” He was “too old to begin now, as the white hairs in his beard testified.” His weeks of effort were rewarded when with the help of de Cueva Suffolk took Boulogne in mid-September. The king entered the city in triumph, reliving his victorious conquest of Thérouanne thirty years before, and stayed on for a week to celebrate his success.

Then, forgetting everything but that he had spent a season marching and maneuvering on French soil, that he had besieged a city and proven wrong those who said he was too feeble to fight again, Henry returned home. The emperor, for reasons of his own, had already made peace with the French. The campaign ended badly, with Norfolk struggling to keep
command of his mutinous soldiers and Suffolk abandoning Boulogne when he heard that a French army was about to attack. In the end there was little to show for the staggering cost of the expedition, but Henry, at least, had kept his honor and proved his remarkable stamina.

Two years later he was dying. In the fall of 1546 his ulcerated leg gave rise to a fever which, though he tried to shake it off by exercising, hunting and meeting with ambassadors as usual, persisted. By December he thought it prudent to make his will.

His last months had been filled with intrigue, as the men around him prepared for the transfer of power they knew could not be delayed for long. Along with John Dudley, Viscount Lisle, who had become Lord Great Master of the household, Edward Seymour was the controlling presence in the Privy Council. Both the bishop of Winchester and the powerful duke of Norfolk had been ousted from their positions of influence, and as the king slowly lost ground to his fever Norfolk lay in the Tower under sentence of death.

Mary was untouched by these shifts of power. Henry continued to show her every sign of favor, showering her with so many jewels that the French were saying she might rule when Henry died and not the nine-year-old Edward. One of the last entries in the king’s household accounts is the purchase of a horse for Mary, a “white grey gelding.” Catherine Parr was less fortunate. An attempt was made to remove her on the grounds that she held heretical opinions, and the king signed the bill of articles drawn up against her. Catherine fainted from fear when she found out what was being planned, but when she asked Henry to pardon her religious fervor and forgive any erroneous views she innocently held he pardoned her, and protected her when the chancellor Wriothesley came to make the arrest.

The legend of Henry’s amorous disposition remained with him to the end, and it was rumored that Catherine might be put aside not for her supposed heresy but for another woman. Charles Brandon’s beautiful fourth wife, Katherine, was the object of these speculations. Brandon’s death in 1545 left her a widow, and it was said that the king was showing her “great favor” in her bereavement. The rumors were persistent enough to annoy Catherine considerably, and as far away as Antwerp merchants were wagering “that the king’s majesty would have another wife.”
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Henry and his matrimonial changes had become a fixture of European political life, and it seemed as if both would go on forever.

The king grew dramatically worse in January of 1547. Very early in the morning of January 28 he died. News of his death was kept from everyone but the Council members for three days. In the banquet hall his meals were brought in to the sound of trumpets as usual, and envoys who requested audiences with him were told that he was overwhelmed with
business or indisposed. Finally the announcement came that he was dead, and his will was read out in Parliament. Henry lay in state in the chapel of Whitehall for twelve days, surrounded by candles and mourners, and at the Leadenhall and St. Michael’s churchyard in Cornhill a dole of one groat apiece was given to some twenty thousand paupers of the city.
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Next to the coffin was a lifelike waxwork figure of the king, dressed in costly robes covered with jewels. An Italian traveler who left a description of the scene counted nearly five hundred gems on the effigy.

The funeral procession that followed the corpse to Windsor was four miles long. The wax figure too rode in its own chariot, drawn by eight horses trapped in black velvet and attended by pages in black livery.
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According to the terms of Henry’s will he was to be buried with Jane under a monument in the chapel at Windsor. His design for the monument called for a large base with statues of himself and Jane, the latter in repose, “sweetly sleeping.” At the corners of the tomb he wanted the sculptor to carve children, seated, throwing down jasper, cornelian and agate roses from baskets they held in their hands. The monument was begun but never finished. Henry’s long coffin was buried in Jane’s tomb, under the floor of the chapel, in the center of the choir. After it was lowered into place his household officials took their staves of office, broke them over their heads, and threw them into the grave.