Mary Tudor (63 page)
Authors: Linda Porter
Mary herself was overcome with joy. Her doctors and her delighted attendants concurred with what she herself wanted so much to believe. The boundless extent of God’s benevolence towards her was something in which she now had absolute faith. The Almighty had given her a husband so much more wonderful than she had any right to expect, and it was perfectly natural that this blessing would be followed by the miracle of conception.
There was no public rejoicing at the news until, as was customary, the queen believed she had felt the child move. This came at the end of November, coinciding with the emotion of Reginald Pole’s return.The privy council instructed Edmund Bonner, bishop of London, that the time had come for official acknowledgement of Mary’s condition: ‘Whereas it hath pleased Almighty God … to extend his Benediction upon the Queen’s Majesty in such sort as she is conceived and quick with child, [we] … do pray and require you … give order that thanks may be openly given by singing of the Te Deum in all the churches in your diocese.’
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Dr Weston, the dean of Westminster and Mary’s chaplain, composed a prayer for the queen which, in its sombre tone, is highly revealing of the Church’s attitude to women and childbirth:
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Dr Weston, the dean of Westminster and Mary’s chaplain, composed a prayer for the queen which, in its sombre tone, is highly revealing of the Church’s attitude to women and childbirth:
Oh most righteous Lord God, which for the offence of the first woman, hath threatened unto all women a common, sharp and inevitable malediction; and hath enjoined them that they should conceive in sin, and being conceived, should be subject to many and grievous torments, and finally be delivered with the danger and jeopardy of their lives; we beseech thee for thine extending great goodness and bottomless mercy, to mitigate the strictness of that law; assuage thine anger for a while and cherish … our most gracious Queen Mary … so help her that in due season [she may] bring forth a child, in body beautiful and comely, in mind noble and valiant …
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As a woman of her time, Mary would not have been surprised by this reminder of her sex’s sinfulness and the dangers of childbirth. Her mood, however, remained resolute and positive. Just before Christmas, she wrote to Charles V, in a rare reference to her condition: ‘As for that which I carry in my belly, I declare it to be alive and with great humility thank God for His great goodness shown to me’. She had suffered morning sickness, her belly was growing, and she had felt the child move. Her medical advisers were monitoring her; Susan Clarencius and all (save one) of her women assured her she was expecting a child. Everybody, including Philip, wanted to believe it. She was absolutely convinced and no one around her wanted to cause her pain - or risk her anger - by suggesting otherwise. She must be pregnant. It was God’s will.
Mary passionately wanted a child and her reasons were dynastic as much as personal.The birth of an heir would resolve all doubts over the succession and help her attain her vision of England’s role in Europe. Elizabeth, Courtenay, even Mary Queen of Scots and other, more distant claimants would not matter any more. As a monarch, Mary needed security as much as she may have welcomed maternity.There is no evidence that she had always longed for a baby, or that she was more sentimental about motherhood than other 16th—century women of high birth. She had numerous godchildren, but that went with her rank. She may certainly have enjoyed this role, but it proves nothing about her own maternal inclinations. The only baby she had known at close quarters was Elizabeth, whose household she so unwillingly shared for three years. That period had been the nadir of her existence. As a queen she would not have understood modern concepts like bonding between a newborn and its mother. The same sort of household that had looked after her as a baby princess would take care of all the needs of her child. There would be a wet-nurse, rockers to soothe the child in its splendid cradle, laundresses and attendants. Mary was an affectionate person and she expected to love her baby dearly. But it would not get in the way of her being a queen.
In general, Mary’s health seemed good, even better than before. She filled out and observers noted that her stomach was growing. But there were those who, right from the outset, had their doubts. Could a woman of her age, with a history of poor health, really have conceived? What if it was not true? Certainly, the French and Mary’s Protestant opponents were quick to raise doubts and they maintained them throughout the winter. At the end of March, Renard reported to Charles V that seditious broadsheets were circulating in London claiming that the queen was not expecting a child and that there was a plot to pass off a substitute as her own.
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Everyone watched with great interest as the period of her withdrawal from public life drew near.The delivery was expected some time in the early spring, and in mid-April, around Easter, Mary withdrew to Hampton Court for her lying-in. ‘The queen has withdrawn,’ the ambassador noted, ‘and no one else enters her apartments except the women who serve her.’ But Philip was already growing embarrassed, writing to his brother-in-law: ‘The queen’s pregnancy turns out not to have been as certain as we thought.Your highness and my sister manage it better than the queen and I do.’
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Whether he meant that the date or the pregnancy itself was uncertain is not clear. He could not have been much comforted when, on 30 April, London went wild as word circulated that the queen had been delivered of a son during the night.The Venetian ambassador reported that church bells were rung, bonfires lit and feasting began in the streets. But the rumour, though it reached as far as Brussels, was false.There was no bonny prince yet, and the authorities found it necessary to issue explicit denials. Whatever the queen might desire or her subjects want to hear, the birth was not imminent.
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Whether he meant that the date or the pregnancy itself was uncertain is not clear. He could not have been much comforted when, on 30 April, London went wild as word circulated that the queen had been delivered of a son during the night.The Venetian ambassador reported that church bells were rung, bonfires lit and feasting began in the streets. But the rumour, though it reached as far as Brussels, was false.There was no bonny prince yet, and the authorities found it necessary to issue explicit denials. Whatever the queen might desire or her subjects want to hear, the birth was not imminent.
Medical advisers then revised the due date. There had been some miscalculation, it was said, but the queen was definitely pregnant. They would not, in any case, have ventured to contradict a queen who was so steadfast in her belief. And the ladies of Mary’s household continued to tell their mistress exactly what she wanted to hear, with no apparent thought for their credibility or her own if, as some of them already knew, they were utterly wrong.
By the end of May, it was not just the king who was concerned. Ruy Gomez made his own disquiet plain:
I would have written to you as you asked me to do about the queen’s giving birth if I had seen in her any sign of heaviness. These last days she has been walking all about the garden on foot, and she steps so well that it seems to me that there is no hope at all for this month. I asked Dr Caligala what he thought about her highness’s condition, and when she would be delivered. He said it might happen any day now, for she had entered the month. But according to her count it would not be strange if the delivery were to be delayed until 6 June.
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At some point in May, letters were prepared announcing the queen’s safe delivery. They were, naturally, undated, and the sex of the child was left blank. Among the intended recipients was Henry II of France, whose ambassador had heard from paid sources that there was no possibility that Mary was pregnant - those around her were merely giving her false hope by saying that she had got the dates wrong.
Although Mary had not been seen in public since moving to Hampton Court, she continued to conduct affairs of state. In early July, she gave audience to the Noailles brothers and roundly chastised them for the failure of the French to participate constructively in the abortive peace negotiations with the emperor. It thoroughly undermined her position as mediator, she complained.The two diplomats were dismayed by her ‘sour reply’: ‘She would never have thought that, as she had been asked to take a hand in this matter, she would be treated with so little deference. She had been a Christian and Catholic princess all her life and she had felt the inroads of the Turks in Christendom as if it had been her own kingdom, having deep compassion for the victims of this war.’
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Later in the month she wrote to Charles V and Mary of Hungary about trade in the Low Countries and told Sir John Mason, her ambassador to the imperial court, that he was to issue explicit denials that she was not with child.
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Later in the month she wrote to Charles V and Mary of Hungary about trade in the Low Countries and told Sir John Mason, her ambassador to the imperial court, that he was to issue explicit denials that she was not with child.
It was her last, weary gesture of belief. Everyone else knew the truth. Precisely when Mary herself acknowledged it is not known but the mere fact that she met Antoine and François de Noailles when the official line was still that she might give birth at any time is strongly indicative of an earlier acceptance of reality than has previously been thought. On 4 August she left Hampton Court for the nearby residence of Oatlands. Hampton Court itself was in dire need of cleaning and fast becoming unsanitary.Throughout the summer it had heaved with free-loading ladies hoping to do well from the birth.When she finally faced the truth, Mary could not wait to get away from it. Her state of mind can only be imagined, but the stress and disappointment had made her paler than ever. She was embittered and despairing, for she knew now that there was nothing to keep her husband in England. She had failed him and she had failed her country. Once more, the intentions of the God she worshipped so devoutly seemed inscrutable. In a lifetime of bitter blows, of loss and fear and uncertainty, there can have been no greater misery.
It is impossible to say with any confidence what had actually happened to Mary. Given her history of menstrual problems and the general medical ignorance of the age, her belief that she was pregnant is perfectly understandable. She was an anointed queen and there would have been no question of an internal examination. Even to mention the possibility might have been regarded as treason. Phantom pregnancies are a recognised medical condition and they were not uncommon in Mary’s time. Lady Lisle, the wife of the governor of Calais, experienced one in the 1530s. She, too, had a cradle and baby clothes prepared and received many congratulatory letters. In June 1537 she took to her chamber, but, by August, her doubts were growing. Her devoted servant, John Husee, wrote before all hope was abandoned: ‘… your ladyship is not the first woman of honour that hath overshot or mistaken your time and reckoning … therefore, good madam, in the name of God, be not so faint-hearted, nor mistrust not yourself. For I assuredly hope that all is for the best; but I admit that it might chance otherwise (which God forbid), yet should not your ladyship take is so earnestly, but refer all unto God.’
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But Honor Lisle, like Mary Tudor, took it very earnestly indeed.
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But Honor Lisle, like Mary Tudor, took it very earnestly indeed.
There is, of course, the possibility that Mary had become pregnant and miscarried. Her own mother, though many years younger, had just that experience with her first pregnancy. Through a combination of ignorance and wishful thinking, Katherine of Aragon also went some months before she accepted that the pregnancy was over.We can probably discount the lurid and malicious stories put about by the Venetians that Mary had evacuated a ‘mole’, a shapeless lump of flesh, which is a rare occurrence but can happen. Nor is it likely that she had ovarian cancer. She lived a further three years in delicate health, but was not seriously ill until the summer of 1558, when the great epidemic of influenza hit England. Some of her symptoms might be explained by a tumour of the pituitary gland, but this cannot be proved conclusively without an autopsy on her remains.The most likely explanation remains a phantom pregnancy, and that is sad enough it itself.
Mary’s devastation was revealed in reported exchanges with Frideswide Strelly, the only one of her women who had told the queen from the outset that she did not think she was pregnant. ‘But … when the rockers and cradle and all such things were provided for the queen’s delivery,’ said one source, ‘that her time should be nigh, as it was supposed, and those parasites had had all the spoil of such things amongst them, and no such matter in the end … when the uttermost time was come, and the queen thus deluded, she sent for Strelly, her woman, again, to whom she said,“Ah, Strelly, Strelly, I see they be all flatterers, and none true to me but thou” ’.
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So it was not just the loss of the child who had never been, but the loss of confidence in those she relied upon most. They had cost her dearly. She had known since the spring that only the prospect of fatherhood was keeping Philip in England. He was needed in the Low Countries and the whole debacle spurred his eagerness to get away. Humiliated almost as much as Mary, Philip was nonetheless nervous about how to break to her the news that he was going. ‘Let me know what line I am to take with the queen about leaving her and about religion, ’ he pleaded in a rough draft probably intended for Ruy Gomez, on 2 August. ‘I see I must say something, but God help me!’
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He did not want a terrible scene when his wife learned that her worst fears were to be realised. Not that she would be left entirely alone. Since the spring, her sister had been with her, as well.
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He did not want a terrible scene when his wife learned that her worst fears were to be realised. Not that she would be left entirely alone. Since the spring, her sister had been with her, as well.
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