Mary Tudor (2 page)

Mary’s very accession was against the odds and is a too commonly overlooked achievement the scale of which is rarely acknowledged. It was, as one contemporary chronicler described, an act of “Herculean daring” that rarely finds its way into the popular annals. Upon becoming queen, Mary entered a man’s world and had to change the nature of politics—her decisions as to how she would rule would become precedents for the future. She gained the throne, maintained her rule, preserved the line of Tudor succession, and set many important precedents for her sister, Elizabeth. Less a victim of the men around her but politically accomplished and at the center of politics, Mary was a woman who in many ways was able to overcome the handicap of her sex. For good or ill, Mary proved to be very much her own woman and a not entirely unsuccessful one at that.

So the Mary of this book is an unfamiliar queen, and hers is an incredibly thrilling and inspirational story. She broke tradition, she challenged precedent; she was a political pioneer who redefined the English monarchy.

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N WESTMINSTER ABBEY, AMID THE CHAOTIC GRANDEUR OF ROYAL
tombs, lies the marble effigy of a resplendent Tudor queen. It is a striking, iconic image of Elizabeth I, her successes inscribed for “eternal memory” in panegyric Latin verses. Each week hundreds of people file through the north aisle of the Chapel of Henry VII, past this monument dedicated to the great “Gloriana.” Many perhaps fail to notice the Latin inscription on the base of this towering edifice:

Elizabeth does not lie alone; she inhabits her elder sister’s tomb.

Queen Mary I was buried there on December 14, 1558, with only stones from demolished altars marking the spot where she was laid to rest. When Elizabeth died in 1603, her body was placed in the central vault of the chapel alongside the remains of her grandparents Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. But in 1606, James I ordered that the dead queen be moved. Forty-eight years after Mary’s death, the stones were cleared from her grave, the vault was reopened, and Elizabeth’s coffin was placed within. Seeking to legitimize a new dynasty and preserve his status in posterity, James wanted Elizabeth’s place in Henry VII’s vault for himself.
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Having moved her body, he then commissioned a monument, celebrating the life of England’s Virgin Queen, to lie upon the tomb of the two dead queens. In doing so James shaped how those
queens would be remembered: Elizabeth magnificent, Mary, her body, as her memory, buried beneath. This book seeks to resurrect the remarkable story of Mary, the first queen of England.

MARY’S ACCESSION WAS
against the odds. It was, in many ways, emblematic of a life of both fortune and adversity, of both royal favor and profound neglect. Mary was a truly European princess. The heir of the Tudor dynasty in England and a daughter of Spain, she grew up adored at home and feted by courts across Europe. Yet this was a prelude to great personal tragedy. When her parents, Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon, divorced, Mary, then just seventeen years old, was reduced from a royal princess to a royal bastard. She became the “Lady Mary,” spurned by her father and superseded in his affections by the infant Elizabeth. For the next three years she defended her mother’s honor, refusing to acknowledge her stepmother, Anne Boleyn, as queen or the illegitimacy of her own birth. Mother and daughter were prevented from seeing each other even when Katherine was dying. Mary was threatened with death as a traitor and forced to submit to her father’s authority as supreme head of the English Church. Her submission defined her. From then on she lived according to the dictates of her Catholic conscience, ready to defend her faith at all costs.

Her defiance cast her in opposition to the brother she loved when he became king. Edward VI was determined to enforce a new religious service and outlaw the Mass that Mary held so dear. In repeated confrontations, Edward challenged Mary to submit to his authority, but she proved defiant, even considering flight to the imperial court in Brussels to retain her independence. As Mary refused to capitulate and accept the new Protestant settlement, Edward overturned his father’s will to prevent his sister from inheriting the throne. When Edward died, the Protestant Lady Jane Grey was proclaimed queen—though she would never be crowned and anointed—and orders were issued for Mary’s arrest. Yet Mary fled and eluded capture. Ready to fight for her throne, she mobilized support across East Anglia. In a dramatic coup in the summer of 1553, she mustered her forces at Framlingham Castle in Suffolk and won her rightful throne.

England had never before had a crowned queen regnant. The accession of Matilda, the daughter of Henry I, in the twelfth century had been challenged by her cousin Stephen and failed. Matilda was never crowned queen of England and granted only the title “Lady of the English.”
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It was not until Edward VI’s death four hundred years later, in 1553, that England once again faced the prospect of female succession. Though there was no Salic law barring a woman from the throne, in practice the idea of female sovereignty was anathema to contemporary notions of royal majesty. The monarch was understood to be God’s representative on Earth and a figure of defense and justice. Women were considered to be too weak to rule and overly led by their emotions.

Yet Mary reigned with the full measure of royal majesty; she preserved her throne against rebellion and reestablished England as a Catholic nation.

MARY’S LIFETIME SPANNED
years of great European crisis, fueled by a rivalry between Spain and France. Spain had been unified in 1479 as a result of the marriage of Mary’s grandparents Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile. France had grown in strength since defeating England in the Hundred Years’ War (1377–1453) and expelling the English from all its territories except Calais. In 1494, Charles VIII, the king of France, invaded Italy looking to make good his right to the Kingdom of Naples. The rival claims of France and Spain to territories in Italy ignited a conflict that would continue throughout the first half of the sixteenth century. England was now dwarfed as a European power but sought as an ally by each to prevent the ascendancy of the other. The accession of Charles of Habsburg, duke of Burgundy, as king of Spain in 1516 and as Holy Roman Emperor three years later increased the enmity with France. Mary’s cousin Charles became ruler of much of central and western Europe; France was virtually encircled by Habsburg lands and challenged the emperor’s claims to the disputed territories in Italy and to lands along the Pyrenees. From the eve of Mary’s birth to shortly after her death, the Habsburg and Valois kings would be engaged in bitter conflict. For much of her life Mary would represent the prize of an English alliance.

Mary was born on the eve of another great struggle that divided Europe, the Reformation. In October 1517, Martin Luther ignited a battle of faith that shattered the unity of Christendom. His attack on the abuses of the Church, expressed initially in his Ninety-Five Theses, became an onslaught against many of its most fundamental teachings. Luther maintained that a sinner was justified by faith alone and salvation might not be secured by the purchase of indulgences or by other “good works.” He denied the authority of the pope in Rome and called on the German princes to take over and reform the Church. With the development of printing, Luther’s ideas spread, as people looked to throw off the yoke of Roman Catholicism and embrace the new teaching.

The vast empire of Charles V, Mary’s cousin, became riven by rebellion and dissent. As the emperor sought to stanch the flow of Protestantism, he faced the great threat of the Ottoman Turks in the East. Under the leadership of Suleiman the Magnificent, the Turks threatened Spain’s trade in the Mediterranean and Habsburg family lands in Austria. Following the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Turkish advance had been unrelenting; Belgrade was captured and the Kingdom of Hungary conquered. From North African bases the Barbary pirates preyed on shipping and raided the coasts of Spain and Italy. During the sixteenth century, “the threat of Islam” cast a long shadow over Christian Europe, rousing successive popes to make calls for a European crusade and commanding much of the emperor’s attention and resources. Throughout her life, Mary would petition Charles to come to her aid and protect her claim to the throne and later her right to practice her religion; but always she would be secondary to his own strategic interests.

England too became the theater of European conflict. Henry VIII’s repudiation of Katherine of Aragon and search for a divorce challenged the power of the papacy and of Katherine’s nephew Emperor Charles V. Charles was determined to protect the position of his aunt, and for a time Henry’s rejection of Katherine and their daughter, Mary, brought the threat of war with Spain and the papacy. Mary would always look to her Habsburg cousin for protection. Her kinship with him gave the struggles of her life a European dimension. Remaining loyal to her Spanish ancestry and looking to preserve England’s position
in Europe, she chose to marry Philip, the son of the emperor and the future king of Spain. It was a match that revived the Anglo-Spanish alliance founded with her parents’ marriage forty-five years before. While protecting her sovereignty as queen and limiting his power, Mary would submit to Philip as a dutiful wife and mourn his long absences abroad.

It is the contrast between Mary as queen and the personal tragedy of Mary as a woman that is the key to understanding her life and reign. Her private traumas of phantom pregnancies, debilitating illnesses, and rejection—first by her father and then by her husband—were played out in the public glare of the fickle Tudor court. The woman who emerges is a complex figure of immense courage and resolve, her dramatic life unfolding in the shadow of the great sixteenth-century struggle for power in Europe.