Mary Rose (11 page)

how she might best order herself to content the king whereof she was most desirous, and in her should lack no goodwill, because she knew well that they were the men that the King loved an trusted …
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Louis was pleased at the pains she was taking, and Henry and Wolsey were delighted to receive such positive reports. On the eve of her departure for St Germain, Dorset declared that she ‘continued her goodness and wisdom’, and consequently increased in favour both with the King and with his Council. She was showing an acute political sensitivity, and a maturity and discretion well beyond her years, because she was only nineteen at this time.

The King chose St Germain for the court’s retreat because it was near to Paris, and because (although he would not admit it) he was finding travel both painful and fatiguing. He seems to have intended enjoying some hunting, but was too sick to indulge in such a strenuous pastime. Part of the time he was confined to bed, and his wife sat by him, becoming daily more accustomed to the role of sick-nurse.
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Nevertheless they managed to return to the Hotel des Tounelles in December, whereupon Louis took to his sickbed permanently, and began to prepare for the end, which he realised could not be long delayed. The great household continued to function with apparent normality, and Christmas was duly kept, but without any of the festivities normally associated with the season. Meanwhile Mary sat by her husband’s bedside and talked to Francis, or rather he talked to her. She felt that he showed insufficient concern for his father-in-law’s situation, and rather too much for hers, and although his behaviour was outwardly correct, she began to be disturbed. His conversation was sophisticated, and interspersed with personal observations that alarmed her, so that she began to feel that he could become a problem if (or rather when) Louis’ protection was removed. She confided her anxieties by letter to both Dorset and Suffolk, and may have been prompted to take some of the French Council into her confidence in case it should be necessary at some time in the future to restrain the Duke of Angoulême’s ardour.
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It was well known in the court that Francis was of an amorous disposition, and considered himself irresistible to women. If he had been less conceited, her off-putting responses would have been sufficient to deter him. Whether he would have been prepared to cuckold his liege lord is another matter, but for the time being Mary’s best defence lay in absolute loyalty to her husband. She could not, however, afford to alienate her admirer, who for all his innuendos was gracious and witty, and when Louis died, he would be king. It would be an exaggeration to say that he could then dispose of her as he thought fit, but his position would obviously be much strengthened, while hers would become weaker.
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Gossip circulated about the King’s sickbed, most of it unflattering to the Queen, who was given singularly little credit for her continence. Much of it probably emanated from the anti-English faction at court, which was led by Louise of Savoy, but it is hard to trace to its source. There was clearly another side to the popular perception of her beauty and graciousness, because as represented in these stories, she was flirtatious, light-headed and irresponsible, ‘giddy in six languages’ as one author put it. She is supposed to have regarded her marriage as a joke, and the Italians in particular circulated salacious stories about her, even before Louis’ final illness deprived him of all capacity to please her. One contemporary historian, Robert de la Marck, Seigneur de Fleuranges, put the derogatory case succinctly. ‘The king,’ he observed, ‘did not feel very strong, because he had desired to be a pleasing companion with his wife, but he deceived himself, as he was not the man for it …’
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He had abandoned the strict diet which his doctors had prescribed for him, and they warned him that if he continued he would die of his pleasure. It is from these stories that the image of a flirtatious and impetuous Mary derive. In fact during Louis’ last illness she behaved with admirable restraint and discretion, and Henry and Wolsey were well advised of the fact. If it had not been so, Henry, who was something of prude, would have made his displeasure known, and the Queen’s position would have become even more precarious. The records do not say very much about Louis’ last weeks, and the traditions are probably deceptive. They represent the King as abandoning all restraint, indulging in rich foods and late nights in an effort to charm his youthful bride. Louise of Savoy, who was prepared to believe anything to the discredit of the royal couple, recorded in her journal that ‘ces amoureuses noces’ had been fatal to him.
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There may have been an element of truth in all this, because overindulgence and unaccustomed activity, both of which were features of his attempts to please her, would probably have hastened his death. However, to blame the Queen for this seems altogether irrational, and on the other side of the coin, his marriage had undoubtedly revived his wish to live. The Earl of Worcester, who had remained behind when his fellow ambassadors had returned home at the beginning of December, wrote to Wolsey that he ‘hath a marvellous mind to content and please the Queen’. Apart from banning Jane Guildford and Jane Poppincourt from his wife’s entourage he had been the very model of a solicitous husband.
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Christmas was quiet at the French court in 1514, because the King was growing progressively weaker, and his death was clearly only a matter of time. On 28 December he rallied his fading energies to write to his ‘good brother’ the King of England. It was a letter full of expressions of contentment with his wife, who

has hitherto conducted herself, and does still every day, towards me in such a manner that I cannot but be delighted with her, and love and honour her more and more each day; and you may be assured that I do, and ever shall so treat her as to give both her and you perfect satisfaction …
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Clearly none of the defamatory rumours which were circulating had reached Louis ears, or if they had, then he had treated them with the scorn which they deserved. His letter went on to praise the Duke of Suffolk, commending him for his ‘virtues, manners and good conditions’ which deserved the highest respect. Happy indeed is the king who has such servants! It was to be Louis’ last effort, and three days later he was dead.
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Mary, who was clearly not with him at the end, is alleged to have fainted at the news. Whether she did or not, as a childless royal widow she now faced an uncertain future, and much would depend upon the support which she received from England. For the time being she had to wait at Cluny until it was determined whether or not she was pregnant by her late husband. She herself was sure that she was not, but it was necessary to be as certain as the medical science of the period permitted, because the future of the French monarchy might depend upon it.
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Meanwhile it was an established principal that the King never dies, so Francis succeeded Louis without a break, and immediately began to make his dispositions as king. This was not unconstitutional and would have become so only if Mary had born a son, and Francis had refused to step down.
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That remained a hypothetical possibility for about a month, but no one took it very seriously, and Francis was duly and solemnly crowned at Rheims on 25 January. Although not in theory obliged to do so, he had by then agreed to honour Louis’ obligations, including his friendship with England, and accepted responsibility for his predecessor’s debts. On 2 January he had confirmed the members of the Parlement of Paris in their places, and did the same with the other sovereign courts. Over the next couple of weeks he confirmed most of the other officers who were in post throughout the kingdom, and made new appointments to the positions of Chancellor and Constable, both of which were vacant at the time of his accession. The former post, which had been empty since 1512, was filled by Antoine Duprat, the President of the Parlement of Paris, and the latter by Charles III, Duke of Bourbon, the King’s most powerful vassal.
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The big gainer by the regime change was however the new King’s mother, Louise of Savoy, who was given the Duchy of Anjou and all the money obtained from the confirmation of office holders, who of course paid a fee for their recognition. This was bad news for Mary, because the new Queen Mother regarded her, as we have seen, with deep suspicion, seeing her as vamp who had her claws into her son, which was a total misrepresentation of the situation. Louis was buried at St Denis on 12 January 1515, but the Queen did not emerge from her seclusion to attend the ceremony. By custom she remained at Cluny, and wore the traditional white which was the royal mourning of France. For this reason she was known thereafter as ‘la reine blanche’ – the white queen. She had been married just eighty-two days, and the period of mourning was forty days, so the designation was not an unfair one.
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Meanwhile, she was exchanging letters with Henry and with Wolsey. Anticipating Louis’ demise and her own incipient widowhood, the latter had written to her on 1 or 2 January, warning her to be careful in everything she said or did, and in no circumstances to entertain suggestions for her remarriage. This was scarcely advice that she needed, and on the 10th she replied with some indignation, ‘I trust the king my brother and you will not reckon in me such childhood …’ She had conducted herself honourably and with great discretion since her coming into France, and trusted that no reports to the contrary had reached England.
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What reports Wolsey had heard we do not know, but the problem now was to retrieve Mary, and as much of her property as might be feasible. With this in mind, he advised the King to send the Duke of Suffolk back to France as his special envoy to negotiate her repatriation, and the Duke arrived in Paris on 31 January. He saw the Queen the same day, and immediately reported formally that she wished to come home ‘as shortly as may be’; she could, he said, ‘never be merry’ until she saw her brother face to face. She begged to be excused from writing personally as she had a toothache, which was probably a result of the stress she was under.
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Difficulties were to be expected, because although Louis’ councillors had confirmed that in the event of her widowhood she would be at liberty to return to England ‘with her servants jewels and effects’, and that the French would reimburse the costs of her travel to Abbeville, there remained the question of her dowry. This could be offset against the million crowns which Louis had acknowledged that he owed the King of England, provided that Francis was willing to accept that debt. There was also the problem of the jewellery which the late king had so generously given to her. Had he bestowed these upon her as his queen, in which case they should remain to her successor, or as personal gifts, in which case she was entitled to take them with her?
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The question of the travel expenses had already been resolved before Suffolk’s arrival, to the tune of £1,470, and this relatively small success boded well for the outcome of his mission, but he and his colleagues, Wingfield and West, expected to have to bargain hard for the greater sums. The situation was complicated by Francis’s unwillingness to let her go. This was not because he found her attractive (although he may have done so) as because she represented a major political asset. A beautiful royal widow, not yet twenty years old, was obviously ripe for remarriage, and Francis was very unwilling to surrender that advantage to the King of England. As Sir Thomas Spinelly reported to Henry VIII on 6 February, the Dukes of Savoy and Lorraine were already being proposed, and although Mary was rejecting all such overtures, as long as she remained under his control she was vulnerable.
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Francis seems to have been particularly concerned that once she was back in England, Henry would revive the marriage with Charles of Ghent, which had been abandoned in the previous July, and which he would have been forced to interpret as a hostile move. It was for that reason that he was prepared to welcome the news that she had secretly bestowed herself on the Duke of Suffolk. As late as 10 February, the Duke was still reporting to Henry that his sister would be married to the Duke of Lorraine, but he also reported that inventories of her goods, her wardrobe, jewels and stables, were being prepared, and that an early settlement could be anticipated.
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Eventually Francis agreed to all that was asked of him, although not without a lot of haggling, and kept up his payments until the outbreak of war in 1522.

Mary’s state of mind at this juncture is hard to assess. Immediately after Louis’ death two friars had been sent from the English court, ostensibly to commiserate with her on the loss of her husband, but in reality to pursue a party agenda. One of them, Bonaventure Langley, was the same man who had taken Catherine’s condolences to Margaret in Scotland after the death of James IV, and it is natural to suppose that she was again responsible for his despatch. The circumstances were similar, and it is reasonably certain that they had not been briefed by the King or Wolsey.
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They apparently knew about Henry’s ‘waterside promise’ to allow her to choose her own mate the second time around, and set out to persuade her that he had no intention of keeping it. They also knew that Suffolk was on his way, and tried to persuade her that his instructions were to bring her back so that the King could renegotiate her marriage to Charles. Their mission left her unpersuaded, but in a state of considerable distress. When Suffolk arrived and discovered what had happened, he had no hesitation in blaming the Howards, whom he knew were in alliance with Catherine to attempt the resurrection of the Imperial connection and the overthrow of the continuing relationship with France which both he and Wolsey favoured.
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Mary meanwhile had decided to take an initiative. If she remained in France, the chances of her being married to a French nobleman were very high. It is probable that she exaggerated Francis’s own interest, because he would have had to divorce Claude in order to marry her, and there is no suggestion that he contemplated such a course. If, on the other hand, her brother was successful in his bid to recover her, there seemed every likelihood that he would marry her to a partner of his own choosing. His relations with Francis, although outwardly cordial, were in fact suspicious. They were too much alike in their youth and ambition to be anything other than rivals, and the Queen Dowager looked suspiciously like a hostage for Anglo-French relations. So she raised with Brandon the possibility of acting upon Henry’s earlier promise before he had any chance to renege, and of marrying him secretly while still in France. It is very unlikely that this was an emotional or impulsive decision, and was probably discussed long and hard over many days.
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Francis, at any rate, got wind of what was afoot, and in welcoming Suffolk as an envoy, declared that he was pleased to learn that he had come to marry the Queen Dowager, an intention which at that time the Duke disowned.
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Such a marriage was an acceptable compromise as far as the French King was concerned, because it would enable him to release Mary without running the risk that she would be used against him.