Tudor (21 page)

THE YOUNGER SISTER: MARY, THE FRENCH QUEEN

T
HE WEATHER WAS STORMY WHEN THE ROYAL PARTY REACHED
Dover on 2 October 1514. Henry had planned to sail into the Channel to bid farewell to his sister Mary as she left for France. Now they would have to say their goodbyes on the shore where a vast crowd was gathering to see the spectacle, the townsfolk from the 400-odd houses that huddled beneath Dover Castle mixing with courtiers and foreign visitors.
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An Italian merchant observed that the noblemen had spent a fortune on their costumes and horses, but none outshone the princess Mary – now known as the French queen. ‘Tall, fair, and of a light complexion', she was ‘a nymph from heaven'. Indeed as brother and sister stood together on the shoreline, they made a startlingly good-looking pair. Henry, with his cropped auburn hair, a ‘complexion very fair and bright', and ‘a round, beautiful face', was the handsomest prince in Christendom; Mary glittering in a ‘gown in the French fashion, of wove gold, very costly', and ‘on her neck a jewelled diamond with a pear-shaped pearl beneath it, the size of a pigeon's egg' – a present from her husband, the King of France.
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In sight, but out of earshot of the crowds, Mary was already talking to Henry about her plans for her future widowhood, her husband's generous gifts notwithstanding. She reminded her brother she had ‘consented to his request, and for the peace of Christendom, to marry
Louis of France though he was very aged and sickly'.
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In exchange Mary wanted Henry now to reiterate his private promise to her that if she outlived Louis she could marry whom she liked for her second husband, and, ‘as ye well know', she already had a groom in mind: the twenty-nine-year-old Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk.
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The handsome Brandon came from a family of impeccable Tudor loyalists. His father had died holding Henry VII's standard at Bosworth and he was raised at court, where he had proved himself an exceptional athlete at the joust. It was there on the sandy lists that he had forged a friendship with Henry and when, in February that year, Henry had granted Brandon the title Duke of Suffolk, he was recognised as the king's principal favourite. Nevertheless Brandon was not a suitable groom for a royal princess. His background was mere gentry and he had a long and messy marital history littered with illegitimate children and young brides abandoned for rich old widows. When Henry kissed his sister goodbye at the waterside and gave his word she could have her choice, he had no intention of honouring his promise.
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Louis XII met his young bride on a rainy day near Abbeville on the river Somme. Accompanying him were over 200 courtiers, including the Duke of Albany, Queen Margaret's rival for the governorship of Scotland. Albany was a tall, striking man of thirty-three, fair-skinned with a strong, bony face framed by a carefully trimmed beard. But Mary's attention was riveted on Louis. He had dressed as for the hunt, in the Renaissance tradition that James IV had followed with Queen Margaret, and his horse was obediently performing half-turns in order that she could see him clearly. A witness described him as looking ‘very antique', in a short red jacket of cloth of gold on crimson designed to match Mary's costume. To please the gathered crowds she blew him a kiss. He promptly rode over, leaned from his saddle and kissed the teenager as passionately, it was said, as if he had been a young man of twenty-five. There was then the consummation of the marriage for Mary, Queen of France, to look forward to.

Following a magnificent ball on 9 October Louis' daughter, the
fifteen-year-old Madame Claude, escorted Mary to the bed where she was to sleep with the old king. Claude was already pregnant by her twenty-year-old husband and cousin, Francis. A charismatic man with black eyes, a dark curling beard and strong nose, Francis was King Louis' nearest male relative and his heir – unless Mary produced a son for Louis. What happened in the bedchamber was therefore of particular interest to Francis. The next morning Louis boasted to the Venetian ambassador that he had ‘crossed the river three times' and to a French courtier that he had ‘performed miracles' with his beautiful bride. ‘I certainly believe this was true', the ambassador noted dryly, ‘for he was most uncomfortable.' As the days passed Louis seemed so infatuated the Venetian ambassador began to worry that ‘To amuse himself with a wife of eighteen is very dangerous to his state of health.'
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He was not alone in these concerns. In Paris they sang a ballad warning ‘The King of England, has given the King of France a new young filly who will carry him off . . . either to hell or to paradise.'
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The French queen was miserable in those early days. Louis had dispensed with her senior English ladies-in-waiting, saying French ones were more encouraging ‘when he would be merry with his wife' in the bedroom.
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She now had no one to confide in, or to turn to for advice, except the young English maids she had been left with, and some, like the dark-eyed fourteen-year-old Anne Boleyn, were scarcely out of childhood. To add to her confusion, her brother had sent Charles Brandon, along with other leading courtiers, to attend her coronation, which took place on 5 November in the Abbey of Saint-Denis. The whole of Paris – then the biggest city in Europe – was decorated with French lilies and English roses, and the following day the French queen was driven in a carriage through the streets wearing a diadem of pearls, and a necklace of brilliant jewels. In truth she was beginning to enjoy herself. ‘How lovingly the king my husband dealeth me, the Lord Chamberlain, with other of your ambassadors, can inform your Grace', Mary wrote to Henry.

Louis had once been a ladies' man, and although he was old and
ill, he could be charming and gracious – as well as very generous. There were compensations, his young wife was discovering, in being an old man's darling. It may also be that, in common with Arthur Tudor, the boasts made after his wedding night were wide of the truth. ‘I am certain,' his son-in-law remarked, ‘unless I have been greatly deceived, that it is impossible for the king and queen to have children.'
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The tournament to celebrate the coronation began on 13 November and continued for three days. During the Renaissance period these games of war commonly began and ended with a procession of challengers, defenders and their retainers. Several forms of combat would follow. First, there was the joust in which mounted knights armed with lances charged at their opponents across a barrier. Then there was the melee in which mounted knights ran at each other without a tilt barrier. Finally combatants armed with blunted spears and swords fought on foot over a barrier. The French appeared to be less expert than their English counterparts, and after Francis was wounded in the hand he decided the time had come to restore French honour by fair play or foul. A huge German mercenary was hired to impersonate a Frenchman and take on Brandon, who had taken the honours on the first day. Brandon, however, proved his match. In a fight on foot with blunted swords, he seized the German by the neck and pummelled him in the face with a mailed fist. The stunned German had to be carried away, blood pouring from his nose.

On 28 December after the English had returned home, Louis wrote to Henry assuring him that ‘The queen hath hitherto conducted herself, and still does, in a manner that I cannot but be delighted with her more and more each day.' He had been amused by Brandon's victory over the German, and told Henry ‘I beg you to believe that, independent of the place he holds with you, and the love you bear him, his virtues, manners, politeness and good condition deserve that he should be received [by you] with even greater honour.'
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Louis' health was in steep decline, however, and only four days later he died.
His young widow withdrew from court, veiled in the traditional white of a queen in mourning and, although it was not yet certain whether or not she was pregnant, Francis, anxious for his crown, rushed through Louis' funeral eleven days later.

In England Henry was curious to hear how this new King of France, three years his junior, measured up. ‘The King of France, is he as tall as I am?' he asked the Venetian ambassador. Frustratingly he was told ‘there was but little difference'. ‘Is he as stout?' The diplomat said he was not. Henry then enquired, ‘What sort of legs has he?' To Henry's delight, he was told they were rather thin. He promptly opened the front of his doublet, and placing his hand on his thigh, said ‘Look here! I have also a good calf to my leg.'
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Henry was certain that Brandon's charm would succeed in engaging Francis as a friend, and decided to send him to France to bring Mary home. First, however, he made Brandon swear he would not marry her while he was in France. The sisters of kings were valuable assets on the diplomatic marriage market, and not to be wasted on a jousting partner. As Henry was to discover, however, his beautiful, spoilt, rich sister was not to be underestimated in her determination to get her way.

Mary knew Francis would have liked to see her marry a Frenchman as her second husband, and so keep her dowry in France. She suspected, though, that still more than that he wished to avoid her returning home only to be married in Burgundy or Spain, as the basis for an anti-French alliance. So when Francis came to visit her in her shuttered rooms at the Hotel de Cluny, she confided in him her wish to marry Brandon and, as she had gambled, Francis promised he would help.

When Brandon arrived in Paris, King Francis called him for a private meeting and outlined his potential support for Brandon's marriage to the French queen. The following evening the bewildered duke was summoned to see his would-be bride. No sooner had Brandon set eyes on her than Mary announced ‘she must be short with him' and
‘show how good a lady she was' to him. If he played his cards right, she promised she would ‘would never have none but' him. ‘The best in France' had warned her that Henry intended to send her off to be married in Flanders, and ‘she had rather be torn in pieces than ever she should come there'. Then, fetchingly, she burst into tears. ‘I never saw woman so weep', Brandon later confessed. He attempted to reassure her and promised that if she got Henry's permission he would marry her, ‘otherwise' he warned ‘I durst not'. The oath of a knight could not easily be broken – least of all when made to a king. She promptly threatened that if he would not marry her immediately, he should look ‘never to have this proffer again', and she would refuse to return to England. Brandon married her. The question was how to break the news to Henry.

Mary laid the groundwork on 15 February in a letter insisting that she was under terrible pressure from the French to marry a groom of their choice. The fear that she would become a tool of the French would, she hoped, help a Brandon marriage look more attractive to Henry. Hoping to bring out her brother's chivalrous instincts, she added that King Francis was pestering her with sexual advances. Brandon's task was to beg Thomas Wolsey – a long-standing ally – for his help. ‘The queen would never let me be in rest till I had granted her to be married,' he pleaded, ‘and so, to be plain with you, I have married her heartily and lain with her.' He thought she might be pregnant. It was essential for the legitimacy of their children and her honour that they have a second, public marriage ceremony; this was usually forbidden during Lent, which began on 21 February, but Brandon told Wolsey he could get special permission from a bishop.
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Wolsey warned Brandon that the king had taken the news ‘grievously'. Henry had believed that Brandon would be ‘torn with wild horses' before he would break his oath. Wolsey suggested they get Francis to write in support of the marriage and the couple pay through the nose for what they had done: 40 per cent of Mary's dower income, and all the plate and jewels she had been given by Louis.
They were also to extract a binding promise from King Francis to send 200,000 crowns of the dowry money back to England. Wolsey ended by reminding Brandon that he was ‘in the greatest danger that ever man was in'.
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As rumours swept Paris that their recently widowed queen had already remarried, Mary wrote a further letter to Henry. Reminding him of his promise that if Louis died she could marry whom she liked, she confirmed she had married Brandon privately, ‘without any request or labour on his part', and not ‘carnally, or of any sensual appetite' but only because she had feared a foreign marriage and despaired of ever seeing Henry again.
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Francis also wrote to Henry in support of this public marriage to Brandon. The campaign worked. Francis' mother, Louise of Savoy, noted in her journal that on ‘Saturday the last day of March, the Duke of Suffolk, a person of low estate whom Henry VIII had sent as ambassador to the king married Mary' in a public ceremony.
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Having sent Henry a stream of cash and jewels, the French queen now also sent the finest stone she had been given. A receipt dated 6 April 1515 records the arrival in England of ‘the great diamond called “le Mirouer de Napples” [the Mirror of Naples], with a large pearl attached'.
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The Italian merchant who saw her wearing it when she departed for France the previous year, claimed it had been ‘valued at 60,000 crowns'.
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Henry was delighted with the jewel and, in a detail not yet noted by historians, he wore it just over a fortnight later. A visiting diplomat recorded being escorted on St George's Day into the royal presence at Richmond Palace, ‘through sundry chambers all hung with most beautiful tapestry, figured in gold, silver and in silk'. On either side were 300 of the guard, ‘in silver breastplates and pikes in their hands, and by God they were as big as giants'. At last he was introduced to Henry, who stood leaning against his golden throne. He was wearing a cap of crimson velvet tied with loops and gold enamel tags, a doublet striped in red and white satin and a flowing mantle of purple velvet.
But what dazzled the diplomat most was the jewel he wore, hanging from a gold collar, worn close around the neck, ‘a round cut diamond, the size of the largest walnut I ever saw' from which ‘was suspended a most beautiful and very large round pearl'.
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