The Other Tudors (10 page)

At the Christmas festivities of 1514, a masque was held in which four ladies danced in the character of Ladies of Savoy and four gentlemen as Portuguese. The ladies were Lady Margaret Guildford, Lady Elizabeth Carew, Lady Fellinger and Bessie Blount; the gentlemen included the King, the Earl of Suffolk, Sir Nicholas Carew and Lord Fellinger, who was part of the Imperial diplomatic mission. At this time Bessie Blount became Henry’s mistress. She did not appear at the next performance on Twelfth Night, when the dancers represented Dutch citizens. The gentlemen were the same, but the ladies (Guildford, Carew and Fellinger) were joined by Jane Popincourt, who must have been an excellent dancer.
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At this point Jane Popincourt was already the mistress of the duc de Longueville. By September 1513, Henry had won the cities of Thérouanne and Tournai and his most prestigious captive, the duc de Longueville, had been brought back to England until a ransom could be negotiated and paid. Longueville was truly a noble captive; his great-grandfather, Jean du Dunois, known as the ‘Bastard of Orleans’, was the illegitimate half-brother of Charles, duc d’Orléans, the father of Louis XII. Both Charles and Jean were also the grandsons of Charles V of France.

While at the English Court, Longueville took Jane Popincourt as his mistress. His rank, good looks and charm endeared him to the English Court, even to the Spanish Catherine, and his presence in England became particularly useful when Louis XII and Henry VIII decided to cement their alliance through the marriage of Louis to Henry’s sister Mary.

This offer of marriage came at an opportune moment. In 1505, 11-year-old Mary had been betrothed to five-year-old Charles, Catherine’s nephew, then King of Castile and heir to the throne of Aragon and the Holy Roman Empire. Her marriage had been part of Henry VII’s political plan to form an alliance with the Spanish–Imperial faction. Henry VIII maintained this alliance, marrying Catherine and enjoying Imperial support in his French War. As the victory of Thérouanne was celebrated, it was agreed that Charles and Mary should be married by May 1514; by late 1513 Mary was ordering fabric to make gowns for herself and her ladies for their meeting with her promised husband at Calais early the following year. A list of Mary’s household officers was drawn up, furniture and plate assembled, and a magnificent wedding outfit ordered.

Politics, however, is an unstable basis for planning such an event. Ferdinand of Aragon suddenly made peace with Louis XII, and then Emperor Ferdinand did the same. Henry was left alone to face France. The new Pope, Leo X, requested that Henry make peace with Louis; grudgingly Henry finally agreed. It seemed that the political scene was also to have an effect on Mary and Charles’s marriage; May came and went, and then the wedding was postponed to June due, it was reported, to Charles being ill. It became clear that some of Charles’s advisers no longer favoured the English marriage, as Henry and Ferdinand were no longer friends and allies. (‘The Council of Flanders answered that they would not receive her [Mary] that year, with many subtle arguments by reason whereof the perfect love between England and the Low Countries was much slaked.’)
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As a result of this cooling in English–Imperial relations, Henry offered Princess Mary’s hand in marriage as part of his settlement with Louis XII, who leapt at the offer. Instead of demanding lands and one and a half million gold crowns for ending the war, Henry was prepared to sanction the wedding and settle for a payment of only 100,000 crowns.

In July 1514 at Wanstead, Mary publicly repudiated her marriage with Charles, adding that it was of her own free will. Mary and Charles had been betrothed for six years and the agreed date for the wedding in May had been ignored by this time. Within a month she was promised to Louis and a letter had been sent to the Pope, indicating that all this was the Emperor’s fault.

Longueville acted as the French King’s representative in the exceptionally swift negotiations. The 52-year-old Louis XII was gaining a young lady of 19 as his wife, one who was generally accepted to be the most beautiful princess in Europe. When the marriage took place on 13 August 1514, Longueville was the proxy for Louis XII. The Archbishop of Canterbury carried out the service and Longueville placed a ring on Mary’s finger, after which the party proceeded to High Mass. The religious ceremony complete, there was feasting and dancing before Mary, dressed in her nightgown, was put into bed and Longueville, removing his stocking, laid his naked leg in bed with her, touching hers, thereby symbolically allowing the royal couple to be legally bedded and formalising the marriage.
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Longueville’s affair with Jane Popincourt lasted until it was time for him to return to France with the bridal party; his ransom had been paid so that he was now free to leave. Jane and Longueville had been giving conversational French lessons to Mary to help her with life at the French Court and Jane would undoubtedly prove immensely useful to the English princess. No one could have foreseen any difficulty with the Princess’s servant going with her to France.

The only person who could have put a stop to this plan was the King of France himself. A list of the servants that Mary intended to bring with her was presented to Louis XII for his approval. However, the English Ambassador, the Earl of Worcester, is said to have informed Louis about Jane’s reputation and the nature of her relationship with Longueville. Louis XII vetoed Jane coming to France and she was forced to remain in England. Considering the number of noble French families who were founded by royal bastards (including Orléans–Longueville), it might seem unlikely that Louis refused Jane’s entry on moral grounds. However, Longueville was his second cousin, and Longueville’s wife, Jeanne de Hochberg, mother of his four children (Claude, Louis, Francois and Charlotte) was also a royal kinswoman, the granddaughter of Yolande de Valois, sister of King Louis XI. One suggestion is that the French King was fond of Jeanne and wanted to spare her the anguish of seeing her husband openly living with another woman. It may simply have been that Louis saw the relationship as an insult to the royal family as a whole.

Yet another reason for his decision may be more political. The most notable Popincourts in France were the family of Jean de Popincourt, Premier Président of the Parlement de Paris in 1400 until his death in 1403. Popincourt was a knight, a chevalier, seigneur de Noisy-le-Sec, Liancourt and Sarcelles. His son, Jean II, followed his father to become a magistrate, and his son, Jean III, was an MP in 1455, Procureur General in 1456, Président de Comptes in 1459, Président of the Parlement under Louis XI, and Ambassador to England. He had one daughter, Claudine, who married Jean du Plessis, seigneur de Perrigny in 1463.
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As Jane was related to the Ambassador this would have enabled her family to send her to England with his party and for the pretty, lively, charming child to have made an impact on the English Court and been invited to stay as one of the Queen’s ladies. In France, however, the family’s strong political position meant that it was felt safer to keep her away from the centre of political life in the Royal Court at the Louvre. This fear was probably unfounded as everything suggests that Jane was an uncomplicated young woman, more interested in romances, fashion and shopping than politics. It is far more likely that Louis XII simply disapproved of his cousin’s open flaunting of the marriage vows, with a woman whom he felt was unsuitable. Louis XII is reported to have referred to Jane as an immoral woman and to have stated that he would see her burned alive before he would have her anywhere near his new wife, Mary.

Jane, forced to remain in London, put herself under Henry’s protection and became, for a brief time, his mistress. The affair was short-lived and probably light-hearted, without deep passion on either side. What is certain is that when Louis XII died on 1 January 1515, Jane made plans to join Longueville immediately and Henry very generously made her a gift of £100. The Court of Louis’s successor, Francis I, was altogether more welcoming to Jane and she travelled to Paris with all haste. Once in France, Longueville and Jane resumed their relationship, and she lived with him at the Louvre. She wrote a series of letters to her friend, Princess Mary, full of chat about French fashion, but with nothing about politics. It was a short-lived pleasure: Longueville, died in 1516.

In 1514, Catherine of Aragon had another baby boy, who lived for only a few hours, and later in the same year she suffered a stillbirth of yet another son.

Apart from the dalliances with the Flemish ladies and Anne Hastings, Henry appears to have been faithful to his wife during the first years of their marriage. Catherine was physically attractive, they were both young, and she had given firm evidence of being fertile. Henry himself had been one of seven children, of whom four had survived, and Catherine was one of five children who grew to maturity. They might look forward to a large and healthy family in time.

However, in 1514 the first proper crack appeared in their marriage. Cardinal Wolsey was negotiating the Treaty with France, and one of his ploys was that Henry would divorce his Spanish Queen. This negotiation tactic would not have been taken very seriously, partly because Catherine was pregnant at the time. Still, the suggestion had been voiced and Henry’s advisers could see marriage as a possible future bargaining tool in European diplomacy.

In that same year Princess Mary married Louis XII, but after 11 weeks the bridegroom was dead. Remembering her brother’s promise that if she married Louis, she would be free to choose her next husband, Mary acted on it before Henry could change his mind. Unwisely, as it turned out, Henry sent his friend Charles Brandon to collect Mary from France. Brandon was Mary’s choice as a second husband and they married in France, throwing themselves on Henry’s mercy when they got back to England.

Francis I, the new king of France, had actively supported Mary and Brandon in their marriage. Mary had earned his animosity when she had refused his sexual advances, and Francis used the occasion to take revenge. Not only did he encourage Mary, a Princess and Dowager Queen, to marry the son of a poor knight, but he also ensured that Henry VIII had the humiliation of having a commoner for a brother-in-law and lost the power that his sister’s marriage prospects would give him in European politics. At least one part of the plan failed; Brandon was Henry VIII’s closest friend and while he may not have been happy about the marriage, in time Henry forgave his favourite sister and his dearest friend.

Charles Brandon’s love life turned out to be quite as complicated as his friend Henry’s would become. As a young man Brandon had been betrothed to Anne, daughter of Sir Anthony Browne, and before being formally married they had a daughter. However, Brandon then revoked his promise of marriage with Anne and married her aunt, Margaret Mortymer, daughter of the Earl of Northumberland and a wealthy widow. Things did not go as well as hoped and Brandon divorced Margaret after a year, or at least he meant to. He married Anne and had a second daughter. On Anne’s death he took up the wardship of Elizabeth Grey and betrothed himself to the little girl; when she grew old enough, however, Elizabeth repudiated the betrothal. This left Brandon free to accept when Princess Mary asked him to marry her. A papal bull was required to sort out the mess of the betrothals and marriages (it turned out the divorce had not been legally completed) to Anne Browne and Margaret Mortymer.

Henry’s cronies were a dissolute crowd. Wolsey fathered at least two bastard children. The Duke of Norfolk had a long-term affair with Elizabeth Holland, daughter of his steward. Henry Norris, George Boleyn and others were reputed to be equally lax in their morals. As far as mistresses went, Henry had behaved with considerable restraint and modesty until this point.