Princess Mary, daughter of Henry VIII

“ All their hope now lay in the Earl of Arundel, who was an enemy of the Chancellor, and who hoped to marry his son to the Princess.
At the public entry of their Majesties into London, one small but ominous misadventure has been recorded showing the drift of Puritan feeling. The streets were gaily decorated, and the citizens indulged their love of pageantry freely. At the Conduit in Gracechurch Street, figures had been painted representing “Nine Worthies,” among whom were Henry VIII., Edward VI. and Mary. Henry VIII. wore armour, and had a sword in one hand, while he held a book in the other. ”

“ To appreciate the motives which led Henry VIII to attach such importance to a male heir, and to exclude his daughter by the Spanish marriage from the succession, we need only cast our eyes on what happened under her, when in spite of all she had become Queen. The idea with which the Tudors had ascended the throne, and administered the realm, that of founding a political power strong in itself and alike independent of home factions and foreign influence, was sacrificed by Mary to her preference for the nation from which her mother came and from which she chose her husband. ”

“ During Mary's government, which had been endurable only because men foresaw its speedy end, all eyes were directed to her younger sister Elizabeth. She was the daughter of Anne Boleyn, who bore her under her heart when she was crowned as Queen. After many changes, Henry VIII, in agreement with Parliament, had recognised her right of inheritance; the people had risen against the enterprise of the Duke of Northumberland for her as well as for Mary. ”

“ Mary I., queen of England, was born at Greenwich, daughter of Henry VIII. and Catharine of Aragon; at first the king's favourite, on her mother's divorce she was treated with aversion; during her brother Edward VI.'s reign she lived in retirement, clinging to her Catholic faith; on her accession in 1553 a Protestant plot to put Lady Jane Grey on the throne failed; she began cautiously to restore Catholicism, imprisoning Reformers and reinstating the old bishops ”

“ Henry’s sister, the Queen Dowager of France, being now married to Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, gave birth to a daughter, and Katharine and Mary were the child’s godmothers. Dignity followed upon dignity, and before she was two years old Mary was an important factor in the treaty by which Henry VIII. ceded Tournay to the French for the sum of 600,000 crowns. ”

“ We are not going to begin with the time “when wild in woods the noble savage ran,” and homes were in caves and under the shade of green trees; our starting-point is to be the reign of Henry VIII., and our first article will embrace that reign and the reigns of Edward VI. and Queen Mary—in other words, from 1509 to 1558.
In those far-back days many things were different from what they are now. There has been a great advance in material comfort. Our forefathers, no doubt, had just as much wit and wisdom as we have ”

“ I knew that she was thinking of Plato's words, 'Justice with prudence we shall by all means pursue,' and my heart ached for her.
'How can I wear the crown which lawfully belongs to another?' she moaned. 'But it will not be for long. Princess Mary is away from London just now, having fled for her life, until she can rally her party. But she will return, I know, and the justness of the nation will place her at its head—for it is idle talk about the slur on her birth. Her mother was lawfully married to King Henry, and it was only for his own vicious ends that he put her away. ”

“ Perhaps this matter drew Mary's sympathy all the more warmly to Catherine of Aragon, against whom Henry VIII was then proceeding before the legates for a divorce. Certainly Mary hated Catherine's rival, Anne Boleyn, whose marriage with the king she and Suffolk would have openly opposed if they had dared, and she flatly refused to go over with her and Henry to the meeting with Francis I between Calais and Boulogne in 1532. She died at Westhorpe in Suffolk on 24 June 1533, and was interred with much heraldic ceremony in the abbey of Bury St. ”

“ Meanwhile, the Princess Mary, the innocent object of these plots, was still happily unconscious of her value in the eyes of politicians. She remained at Richmond Palace during the absence of the court, and Henry was kept well informed of her health and occupations. The Duke of Norfolk wrote to him on the 13th June, that he and the other members of the Council were, “on Saturday last,” with the Princess, “who, lauded be Almighty God, is right merry, and in prosperous health and state, daily exercising herself in virtuous pastimes”. ”

“ The bindings made for Queen Mary often show her coat-of-arms encircled by flames. They were bound by Thomas Berthelet, who had been Royal Bookbinder to Henry VIII. Most of the books are bound in calf, but some are in embroidered velvet, and show the pomegranate flower. Mary also used the badges of the fleur-de-lys and the portcullis of the De Beauforts. Her initials, "M. I.," are sometimes used on her bindings. Queen Mary used the same supporters as Henry VIII. in the latter part of his reign, namely, the lion and the red dragon, but they do not show on any of her books. ”

“ The Duke presented his supposed fiancée with a cross of diamonds set with four pearls, and one great pearl pendant, [238] and there the matter ended for the moment. Anne of Cleves had landed at Deal, and Henry was taken up with the subject of his own marriage.
A letter in the Record Office from Henry VIII. to some person unnamed, commands him to prepare himself “and all other things meet and convenient, to bring unto us our entirely beloved daughters, the ladies Mary and Elizabeth, in such honourable sort as you can”. ”

“ To yield that point was to give up all he had been fighting for during the last ten years, and to cut away the ground from under his feet. If he temporised long enough, the possible birth of a son might allow him to restore his daughter without loss of his own dignity.
Charles V., in putting forward Don Loys as a suitor, made the condition, that the slur cast by Henry on Mary’s birth should be removed; and Henry’s instructions to his special envoy, Sir Thomas Wyatt, on the renewal of his amity with the Emperor, show the use her father intended to make of her renunciation of her birthright. ”

“ The death of Isabella (who is always called Elizabeth in England) and the question of the succession to Castile opened wider plans to Henry's imagination. Already, in 1500, Henry had had an interview with Philip of Burgundy in St Peter's Church, outside Calais, and Mary's marriage with Philip's son, Charles, Duke of Luxemburg, then four months old, had been mooted, as well as the Duke of York's to a Flemish princess. Then, in 1505, Henry thought of marrying Margaret of Angoulême, or her mother, Louise of Savoy, and suggested that Mary should marry the Dauphin. ”

“ For the first time in English history there were none but women to claim the crown. Moreover, of these at least four had some show of right. They were Mary, the Catholic daughter of King Henry's first wife, and Elizabeth, his Protestant daughter by Anne Boleyn. Or, if both these were to be considered illegitimate, then came their cousins, Mary Stuart, descended from one of Henry's sisters, and Lady Jane Grey, from another. The friends of Lady Jane tried to raise her to the throne, but only succeeded in bringing her to the scaffold. ”

“ Those who take a more detached view of history can find little evidence to support the assumption. The nation as a whole seemed to acquiesce in the persecution. The government was weak, there was no standing army, and Mary, like all the Tudors, rested her authority on popular sanction. Plots against her were few, and they were all easily suppressed. Parliament met regularly. It was not the submissive parliament of Henry VIII. It thwarted some of Mary's dearest projects. For some time it offered opposition to, if it did not actively resist, the Spanish marriage. ”

“ Mary’s mother had been treated very cruelly and unfairly by King Henry, and had finally been put away from him that he might marry Anne Boleyn.
As a child Mary was shown more honor than had ever been given to an English princess before. The palace provided for her residence was carried on at an enormous expense. She had her own ladies in waiting, her chamberlain, treasurer, and chaplain, as if she were already queen. ”

“ Palmer, Sir Thomas, 231. —— Sir Robert, servant to the Earl of Arundel, 279. Parliament, first of Queen Mary, meets on the 5th October, 1553, 257. passes a bill declaring the marriage between the Queen’s father and mother good and valid, 259. re-establishes religion as it was left on the death of Henry VIII., 260. causes to be attainted those who had been foremost in conspiring to exclude Mary from the throne, 260. presents the Queen with an address on the subject of her marriage, 262. ”

“ The traditional picture of Mary during these days shows her at his bedside, amusing him by singing and playing, and the last letter of Louis XII., written a few days before his death to Henry VIII., is in praise of his wife, "who has hitherto conducted herself, and still does 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." ”

“ Let us seek this honour against some other, rather than fall to debate amongst ourselves.” [81]
Mary, however, was by this time convinced of Elizabeth’s want of sincerity, and formed, therefore, a matrimonial plan of her own, which, she flattered herself, would be considered judicious by all parties. It will be recollected, that, during the troubles which ensued soon after Mary’s birth, Matthew, Earl of Lennox, having drawn upon himself the suspicion, both of the Protestant and Catholic parties in Scotland, retired into England, where Henry VIII. gave him his niece in marriage. ”

“ He was in suspicious connection with the pope, and having been required to return home upon his allegiance, had refused obedience. His mother, and his mother's attached friend, the Marchioness of Exeter, we now find among those to whom the Nun of Kent communicated her prophecies and her plans. It does not seem that the countess thought at any time of reviving her own pretensions; it does seem that she was ready to build a throne for the Princess Mary out of the ruined supporters of her father's family. The power which she could wield might at any moment become formidable. ”

“ At the same time Tunstal and Wingfield represented that, as the Princess was not much more than nine years old, it might greatly endanger her health to be transported into an air so different from that of England. In replying more particularly to the Emperor’s statement, that his subjects wished him to marry the Portuguese Princess, Mary being still of tender age, Henry, seeing that nothing was to be gained by a breach with his nephew-in-law, told him that the Princess his daughter was still young; she was his own treasure and that of his kingdom; she was not of age to be married ”

“ She was destined to bear the auspicious name of Elizabeth, in memory of her grandmother, that heiress of the house of York whose marriage with the earl of Richmond, then Henry VII., had united the roses, and given lasting peace to a country so long rent by civil discord. The unfortunate Mary, now in her sixteenth year, was stripped of the title of princess of Wales, which she had borne from her childhood, that it might adorn a younger sister; one too whose birth her interest, her religion, and her filial affection for an injured mother, alike taught her to regard as base and infamous. ”

“ Melville’s Memoirs, p. 110-30. The French historian Castelnau, speaks in exactly similar terms. When sent by the King of France as ambassador to Mary, “I found that princess,” he says, “in the flower of her age, esteemed and adored by her subjects, and sought after by all neighbouring states, in so much that there was no great fortune or alliance that she might not have aspired to, not only because she was the relation and successor of the Queen of England, but because she was endowed with more graces and perfection of beauty than any other princess of her time.”—Castelnau in Jebb, vol. ii. p. ”

“ Possibly the birth of the Princess Mary did something to restore his lost affection, but only for a time. He was becoming a perfect libertine. On 15 June 1525, much to Catherine's distress, he created his natural son Henry Fitzroy duke of Richmond, and gave him precedence of all the nobility of England, even of the Princess Mary. He was a child of six years, the son of one Elizabeth Blount, whom the king afterwards married to Sir Gilbert Tailbois. The king bestowed much care upon his education, and sent him into Yorkshire as viceroy or president of the north. ”

“ There will be no religious freedom if Princess Mary becomes queen. Tell Lady Jane she must not think of herself, for, student as she is, no doubt the cares and the pomps and ceremonies of royalty will be distasteful to her; but she must be willing to sacrifice her own wishes to the good of the people. ”

“ It is not unlikely that Mary’s self-conquest in regard to Elizabeth, at the time of the latter’s abandonment and disgrace, would have resulted in a lasting affection, founded on pity, and that motherly instinct so strongly developed in the Queen, had not her sister persistently thrown herself into the arms of the rebels. At the time of Henry’s death, and until the beginning of Mary’s reign, their relations were as cordial as it was possible for Mary to make them. ”