Mary Tudor

“ This pale-faced, silent, sombre young man, busy about the realities of government, was far less to her taste than her rubicund, good-natured husband, her lord and servant, over whom she could queen it in Tudor fashion when the occasion served. The maker of the legend knew more of the 238 hearts of princesses than of emperors, and Mary, true to her upbringing, wore, no doubt, the pretty gowns she had had made for the meeting with the French Court, and would have been gratified had she seen the faintest desire in the eyes of her former suitor. ”

“ It almost excites compassion even for Mary Tudor, when her passionate efforts to inspire him with affection are contrasted with his impassiveness. Tyrant, bigot, murderess though she was, she was still woman, and she lavished upon her husband all that was not ferocious in her nature. Forbidding prayers to be said for the soul of her father, hating her sister and her people, burning bishops, bathing herself in the blood of heretics, to Philip she was all submissiveness and feminine devotion. It was a most singular contrast, Mary, the Queen of England and Mary the wife of Philip. ”

“ APPENDIX C THE QUEEN OF SCOTS The life of Mary Tudor has been in its place described as supremely tragic; that of Mary Stewart presents a tragedy not greater but more dramatic— whatever view we may take of her guilt or innocence with regard to Darnley, to Bothwell, to the conspirators who would fain have made her Queen of England. Of the misdeeds laid to her charge, that of unchastity has no colourable evidence except in the case of Bothwell, for whom it may be considered certain that she had an overwhelming passion; and even there the evidence is not more than colourable. ”

“ On the other hand, Henry’s object was of course to defeat this project, to prevent Mary Tudor if possible from succeeding to her inheritance, to place obstacles in the way of any marriage that might be [Pg 216] proposed, and above all to hinder by every means in his power, her union with the Prince of Spain.
Mary was no politician. The diplomacy under which she had suffered had not taught her to meet treachery with dissimulation and fraud with cunning. She could arm herself at all points for defence, but she was not a good dissembler. ”

“ There was place for a splendid creation. No more favorable material for a tragic heroine exists than Mary Tudor—with the single exception of that other Mary who fell beneath the Puritans like a lily before the scythe of the destroyer. Around her history and person circle all the elements of the tenderest pathos, which is of the very essence of tragedy. ”

“ If it loaded Bonner and Gardiner with shame and hatred, it fixed for three centuries the popular estimate of Mary Tudor. Froude used it with extraordinary skill. His relation of the death of a young Protestant martyr, an apprentice from Essex, taken as it is almost bodily from Foxe, must thrill even yet the least emotional of his readers. The permanence of Mary's hideous title and her abiding unpopularity are more due to the compelling power of a work of genius than to any outstanding demerits, as judged by contemporary standards, in the Catholic Queen. ”

“ But he was not even sincere in his treachery, for lightly as he imperilled Elizabeth’s life by encouraging the Princess to associate herself with the factious, it was scarcely his aim in the event of a successful insurrection to place her on the throne. Mary Queen of Scots was Mary Tudor’s next legitimate heir, and as the wife of the Dauphin would, if she mounted the throne of England, bring to a glorious end the humiliation under which the French had smarted for centuries, in seeing the English monarchs, their rivals, quartering the arms, and coolly assuming the style of Kings of France. ”

“ Her habits of wandering about her palace at night, and of sitting for hours on the floor, with her knees drawn up to her face, and her further habit of perpetually looking out for miracles, and regarding the most ordinary occurrences as miraculous, all point in the same direction, and we may fairly, as well as charitably, believe, that at any rate from the time that she recognised the fact that she could bear no child, and that Elizabeth must be her inevitable successor, Mary Tudor was no longer responsible for her actions. ”

“ But the delirium of Ruth Tudor appeared to increase with every nightly visit to the cave of secret blood; some hideous shadow seemed to follow her steps in the darkness, and sit by her side in the light. Sometimes she held strange parley with this creation of her phrensy, and at others smiled upon it in scornful silence; now, her language was in the tones of entreaty, pity, and forgiveness; anon, it was the burst of execration, curses, and scorn. ”

“ Mary Tudor had dismissed her ladies, for she wished to speak with the Cardinal de Moreno alone.
Throughout the audience with the papal Nuncio, His Eminence had already seen the storm-clouds gathering thick and fast on the Queen's brow. His Grace of Wessex, gone to fetch a breviary left accidentally on the terrace-coping, had been gone half an hour, and moreover had not yet returned. ”

“ Let us look round, then, and see into what sort of a country, into what sort of a world, the young adventurer is going forth, at seventeen years of age, to seek his fortune.
Born in 1552, his young life has sprung up and grown with the young life of England. The earliest fact, perhaps, which he can recollect is the flash of joy on every face which proclaims that Mary Tudor is dead, and Elizabeth reigns at last. As he grows, the young man sees all the hope and adoration of the English people centre in that wondrous maid, and his own centre in her likewise. ”

“ On the 17th of November Elizabeth became queen of England, and the princes of Lorraine—Francis the great duke of Guise, and his brother the cardinal—induced their niece and her husband to assume, in addition to the arms of France and Scotland, the arms of a country over which they asserted the right of Mary Stuart to reign as legitimate heiress of Mary Tudor. ”

“ The duke foresaw, and dared [p. 018] the indignation of the people; but he had left himself no choice except between treason to the country or now inevitable destruction. [43] When he called in the help of France he must have known well that his ally, with a successful army in England, would prevent indeed the accession of Mary Tudor, but as surely would tear in pieces the paper title of the present queen and snatch the crown for his own Mary, the Queen of Scots, and the bride of the Dauphin. ”

“ Then he checked himself abruptly, feeling no doubt how useless it was to discuss such matters seriously just now.
"The only woman," he added, falling in once more with his friend's lighter mood, "the only woman whose blandishments His Grace of Wessex has ever been known to resist."
"And that with difficulty," concluded the Duke gaily. "But you see, friend," he added with mock gravity, "with a Tudor you never can tell; you might lose your heart one day and your head the next."
"Mary Tudor loves you too well . . ." protested Lord Everingham. ”

“ The colloquy between Mary Tudor and Ursula Glynde had probably not lasted more than a few minutes.
To Wessex it seemed as if years had elapsed since he had closed the door of the small inner room behind him, shutting out from his sight the beautiful vision which had filled his soul with gladness.
Years! during which he had learnt chapter by chapter, the history of woman's frailty and deceit. Now, he suddenly felt old, all the buoyancy had gone out of his life, and he was left worn and weary, with a millstone of shattered illusions hung around his neck. ”

“ If, in some ways, Mary seemed to have inherited a large amount of Tudor obstinacy, her sincere and earnest intention to act according to the light of conscience, and to govern by strictly constitutional methods, made her singularly unlike her father before, or her sister after her. ”

“ The millions who will read Mary Tudor, or witness the play on the stage, will carry away the impression that my ancestor was a vulgar yeoman, in some way connected with the stables, whereas he was a man of ancient lineage, a trusted friend and servant of the queen, who confided to him in time of danger the Lieutenancy of the Tower, and the custody of the Princess Elizabeth. This princess so respected Sir Henry, that although she complained of his severity during her captivity, she visited him at Oxburgh after her accession to the throne, and treated him with the greatest consideration. ”

“ These depict Mary Tudor as a broad-faced woman, with an evidently dazzling complexion, small eyes, golden hair, and a firm but rather sensual mouth. At the Historical Exhibition held in the New Gallery in 1902, the writer was particularly struck by the remarkable resemblance between the disputed likeness of Jane Grey, preserved at Althorp, and the small portrait of her grandmother, Mary Tudor, attributed to Holbein, now in His Majesty’s collection at Windsor Castle. ”

“ Once only do we see her, as a child of four, in the winter of 1499, playing in the great hall at Eltham, [4] when Lord Mountjoy brought Erasmus to see Prince Henry there. When she emerges into clearer light, she shows herself to be of little mental originality but of strong passions, and it will be interesting to describe, so far as is possible, the qualities she may have inherited from her father and her mother. Henry VIII., Queen Margaret of Scotland, Queen Mary of France, all had these violent qualities which are miscalled Tudor, for they really belong to the house of York. ”

“ Miss Agnes Strickland and other historians have fallen into the error of stating that Mary Tudor appointed the Lady Frances, Duchess of Suffolk, to be one of her women of the bedchamber, and her two daughters, the Ladies Katherine and Mary Grey, maids of honour. A little reflection will show that such appointments were as impossible in Mary’s time, as it would be, in our day, for Her present Majesty, to name the Duchess of Fife and her children, or the Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll, to similar positions in her household. ”

“ In England, private theatricals are to be traced back to an early date. We go far enough in that direction, however, by referring to Mary Tudor, the solemn little daughter of Henry VIII., who, with other children, acted before her royal sire, in Greenwich Palace, to the intense delight of her father and an admiring court. Henrietta Maria, Queen of Charles I., is remembered in court and theatrical annals for the grace with which she played in pretty pastoral French pieces, assisted by her ladies, on the private stages at Whitehall and Hampton Court. ”

“ With a great deal of circumlocution, he prayed the Queen to marry, but not to choose a husband among foreigners, and he expatiated on the advantages she would derive from a union with a member of the English nobility. Such language, respectful though it might be, was not such as to be acceptable to Tudor ears, and in an aside, Mary exclaimed that she would be a match for all her Chancellor’s cunning. ”

“ When Mary succeeded, in full age and in full possession of her powers, such as they were, and with the Tudor temper and more than the Tudor obstinacy, irritated by a life-long course of ill-treatment and annoyance, a furious reaction was the consequence. ”

“ This quiet little Princess only reigned as Queen of England for nine days. Most of the country rose in arms on behalf of Mary Tudor, Edward VI's oldest sister, and the Duke of Northumberland's army was soon defeated and he was taken prisoner. Jane had no wish to be Queen; she, like the others, thought that Mary was the one entitled to rule. When her father came to her on July nineteenth and told her that her friends had been beaten and that she was no longer the Queen she was really glad. ”

“ Henry and Elizabeth were examples of one type and Mary of another. The Tudor father and daughter were, as we have already seen, not examples merely but extreme examples of the unimpassioned, ever active, ever visible class. Mary was as extreme an example of the impassioned, meditative, persistent and tenacious class. It was a remarkable coincidence that pitted two such mental and bodily extremes against each other. All sane human beings have much more of that which is [Pg 75] common to the character of the race than they have of that which is peculiar to the individual. ”

“ These images, so opposite, yet so alike, affected the spirit of the gazer, and he almost wept as he continued looking upon them, till he was aroused from his trance by the strange conduct of Ruth Tudor, who had caught a glimpse of his face as he bent in sorrow over the coffin. She sprung up from her seat, and darting at him a terrible glance of recognition, pointed down to the corse, and then, with a hollow burst of frantic laughter, shouted—“Behold, thou liar!” ”

“ The ancient furniture, some of which had evidently belonged to the queen-duchess, was sold in 1805, and amongst the other miscellaneous lots put up to auction was a lock of Mary Tudor’s fair hair, which was purchased by a Suffolk antiquary for seven shillings.
Mary espoused, as far as she dared, the cause of her unhappy sister-in-law, Katherine of Aragon, [68] and it is not surprising, therefore, that though in London at the time, she did not attend the coronation of Anne Boleyn, where her husband figured so conspicuously as Lord High Constable of England. ”

“ Well considered, these words announce at once her resolution not to marry. Between Mary Tudor who thought to bring the crown to the heir of Spain, and Mary Stuart similarly pledged to the heir of France, nothing was left for her—since she would not wish the husband of her choice to [Pg 226] be of inferior rank—but to remain unmarried. From listening to Philip's wooing she was kept back by her sister's example, whose marriage had destroyed her popularity. And for Elizabeth there would have been yet another danger in this alliance. ”