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Mary I in Writing
Letters, Literature, and Representation

Edited by
Valerie Schutte
Jessica S. Hower
 Queenship and Power

Series Editors
Charles E. Beem, University of North Carolina, Pembroke, NC, USA
Carole Levin, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE, USA
This series focuses on works specializing in gender analysis, women’s
studies, literary interpretation, and cultural, political, constitutional, and
diplomatic history. It aims to broaden our understanding of the strategies
that queens—both consorts and regnants, as well as female regents—
pursued in order to wield political power within the structures of
male-dominant societies. The works describe queenship in Europe as well
as many other parts of the world, including East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa,
and Islamic civilization.

More information about this series at

https://link.springer.com/bookseries/14523
Valerie Schutte · Jessica S. Hower
Editors

Mary I in Writing
Letters, Literature, and Representation
Editors
Valerie Schutte Jessica S. Hower
Independent Researcher Southwestern University
Beaver Falls, PA, USA Georgetown, TX, USA

ISSN 2730-938X ISSN 2730-9398 (electronic)

Queenship and Power
ISBN 978-3-030-95127-6 ISBN 978-3-030-95128-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95128-3

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
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To Bates and Eloise—we are looking forward to your first trips to
Winchester.
 Acknowledgements

Mary I in Writing and Writing Mary I were begun in a different world.

The abstracts for this collection were solicited in 2019, in complete igno-
rance of what the year 2020 would bring; in stark comparison, the essays
themselves were written at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. As a
result, these volumes look quite unlike how they were initially imagined
and what they might have been, if our contributors had been able to travel
to and research in archives and libraries across the US, UK, and Europe.
Instead, our authors had to make do with printed calendars, digital repro-
ductions, largely English-language, and admittedly biased sources, and for
those lucky enough, notes and photographs from previous archive visits.
This is by no means to denigrate these twenty chapters, the scholars who
produced them, or the research that went into them. In fact, many of
the essays use materials that scholars have had access to for the last 150
years to great effect, and convincingly show that more, new work can still
be done with traditional sources to further our understanding of Mary I.
However, the immense struggles and challenges of the last two years also
bear airing, and we are all eager to return to many of the old rhythms and
opportunities afforded to us before the pandemic hit.
Even at the height of our stresses and anxieties over the last year,
we chose to forge ahead with this project because the response to our
call for papers, was put simply, overwhelming, and in the best possible
way. We received a very large number of truly brilliant proposals, demon-
strating just how important and necessary it is to continue to pursue new

vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

research on Mary I, complementing and expanding upon the field as it

currently stands. We are the beneficiaries of eighteen (twenty including
our own chapters) stellar pieces, penned by an international cohort of
highly sophisticated scholars, junior and senior, grappling with a set of
core questions and source bases. They ask what happens if we center
crucial, analytical questions, topics, themes in tandem with fascinating,
underused texts, contemporary to the Tudor era and down to our own.
We owe our contributors a great deal of thanks for their resiliency and
willingness to write fantastic essays in uncertain conditions with limited
access to the tools of our trade and new responsibilities at work and at
home.
We would also like to express our enormous thanks to Charles Beem
and Carole Levin for being our biggest champions and for welcoming this
set into their wonderful Queenship and Power series, to which we both
are indebted for the groundbreaking work that it regularly publishes on
Tudor queens and queenship.
Our friends and family have been immensely helpful and supportive
along the way, listening to our (perhaps obsessive) observations and
complaints about Marian history and historiography. Without them, these
volumes would not be possible.
 Praise for Mary I in Writing

“Mary I in Writing and Writing Mary I revisit the traditional image of

queen Mary I, historically tinged by religious and political propaganda,
offering fresh insights, analytic methods and new primary materials, from
which the first queen regnant of England emerges as a complex and multi-
faceted figure, a learned, decisive, sharp and empowered ruler. While
unveiling the real Mary Tudor, the essays in these two volumes delin-
eate the shaping of her myth through the centuries, decisively calling into
question her image as a dark, fanatical, bloodthirsty queen, and a mere
‘placeholder’ for her half-sister Elizabeth. Essential reading for all future
work in the period.”
—Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, University of Vallodolid, Spain

ix
 Contents

Introduction 1
Jessica S. Hower and Valerie Schutte

Consort and Regnant

“By Your Loving Mother”: Lessons in Queenship
from Catherine of Aragon to Her Daughter, Mary 19
Theresa Earenfight
Negotiating Queenship: Ritual Practice, Material Evidence,
and Mary I’s Narrative of Authority 41
Michaela Baca

Rise and Representation

“More to Be Feared Than Fearful Herself”: Contrasting
Representations of Mary I in Sixteenth-Century Chronicles
and Firsthand Accounts 63
Courtney Herber
“Marie Our Maistresse”: The Queen at Her Accession 85
Valerie Schutte

xi
xii CONTENTS

Constructing Kingship
What Mary Did First: Re-Assessing the Biblical Analogies
of England’s First Female King 111
Aidan Norrie
“Horrible and Bloudye” or “Most Serene and Potent”:
Mary I and Empire 135
Jessica S. Hower

Material Manifestations
Mary’s Participation in the Ritual of the New Year’s Gift
Exchange as Princess and Queen 165
Jane Lawson
Accounting Legitimacy in Purple and Gold: Mary Tudor,
Household Accounts, and the English Succession 189
Elizabeth McMahon

Memory and Myth

Happily Ever After? Elizabethan Representations of Mary
I and Philip II’s Marriage 221
Johanna C. E. Strong
“She …Yielded a Mild and Gracious Spirit into the Hands
of Her Maker”: Three Catholic Accounts of the Death
of Mary I 247
Carolyn Colbert
Mary I During the Popish Plot and Exclusion Crisis:
Memory and Catholic Remembrance 271
Eilish Gregory

Index 291
 Notes on Contributors

Michaela Baca is a Ph.D. candidate in English at Texas A&M University.

Her research interests are book and material histories, women’s writing,
and digital humanities. Her dissertation tracks the material history of
Tudor Queenship from the Wars of the Roses to Elizabeth I’s death
in 1603. Her current projects (outside of her dissertation) focus on
Elizabeth Woodville’s material history, Arthurian Literature and Tudor
Kingship, and Mary I’s ritual practice.
Carolyn Colbert a former Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada doctoral fellow, is a Visiting Assistant Professor in
the Department of English, Memorial University of Newfoundland. She
has contributed to Henry VIII and History (2012), Catholic Renewal
and Protestant Resistance in Marian England (2015), The Birth of a
Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I (2016), A Biographical
Encyclopedia of Early Modern Englishwomen, Exemplary Lives and Memo-
rable Acts (2017), and Brave New Worlds: Shakespeare in Newfoundland
and Labrador (2018). Her work has also been published in Reformation
and University of Toronto Quarterly. Her work-in-progress is a study of
representations of Mary Tudor in popular culture.
Theresa Earenfight is currently at work on a study of the cultural
exchanges of Catherine of Aragon and her sister-in-law, Marguerite of
Austria. She is Professor of History at Seattle University. Her work on late
medieval European queens and queenship includes Catherine of Aragon:

xiii
xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Infanta of Spain, Queen of England (2021), Queenship in Medieval

Europe (2013), The King’s Other Body: María of Castile and the Crown of
Aragon (2009), and three edited collections that focus on the political,
economic, and cultural power and influence of queens. She is currently at
work on a study of the cultural exchanges of Catherine of Aragon and her
sister-in-law, Marguerite of Austria. She is Professor of History at Seattle
University.
Eilish Gregory is Postdoctoral Research Associate of the Royal Historical
Society. She has recently held lectureships in History at the Univer-
sity of Reading and Anglia Ruskin University. She is a historian of
early modern religion, politics, and society, specializing in the impact of
Catholic penal laws in seventeenth-century Britain and inter-confessional
networks between Catholics and Protestants. She has a B.A. (Hons) in
History and an M.A. in Medieval and Early Modern Studies, both from
the University of Kent, and was awarded a Ph.D. in History at Univer-
sity College London in 2017. Since completing her Ph.D., she has been
awarded library fellowships at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Durham
University, and Marsh’s Library, and has published extensively in journals
and publishing houses, including The Seventeenth Century, Routledge,
Palgrave Macmillan, and Brill Press. Her first monograph Catholics during
the English Revolution, 1642–1660: Politics, Sequestration and Loyalty was
published by Boydell in 2021.
Courtney Herber holds a doctorate in history from the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln, specializing in Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Her
doctoral project, written under the supervision of Carole Levin, focused
on the roles performed by foreign-born early modern English consorts
in the Tudor and early Stuart periods and how networking, rituals of
naturalization, and intercession were integral to the popular creation and
maintenance of consorts as legitimate sharers of monarchical authority.
She is also interested in the posthumous representation of historical
figures on the stage and in modern popular culture. Her work has
appeared in encyclopedias, essay collections, journals, podcasts, and in a
table-top role-playing game (TTRPG) module.
Jessica S. Hower earned her Ph.D. in History at Georgetown Univer-
sity in 2013, after completing her M.A. there in 2009 and her B.A. at
Union College in 2006. She is currently an Associate Professor of History
at Southwestern University, a small liberal arts college outside of Austin,
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xv

Texas, where she teaches on Britain, Ireland, the British Empire, the Early
Modern Atlantic World, comparative colonialism, gender, and memory.
Her first monograph, Tudor Empire: The Making of Britain and the
British Atlantic World, 1485–1603 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), explores
over a century of theorizing about and activity in the world beyond
England’s borders, showing how enterprise aboard at once mirrored,
responded to, and provoked politics and culture at home, while decisively
shaping the broader Atlantic context. Other projects have appeared in
Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice, Cannibalism and
the Early Modern Atlantic, and Britain and the World, and The Oxford
Handbook of Thomas More’s Utopia (forthcoming).
Jane Lawson is the editor of The Elizabethan New Year’s Gift Exchanges,
1559–1603, (2013) and coeditor with Arthur Kinney of Titled Eliza-
bethans: A Directory of Elizabethan Court, State and Church Officers,
1558–1603, (2014). She has published on the subjects of the New Year’s
gift exchanges, books given to the Queen and the patronage received
in return for these gifts, and personnel in the Queen’s Privy Chamber,
including Bess of Hardwick, Lady Mary Cheke, and Giovanni Battista
Castiglione. Her current projects are the Maids of Honor and other
relationships within the Royal Household and Mary’s I household ordi-
nances and gift exchanges. She is a Senior Program Associate for the
Emory Vaccine Center and Honorary Research Fellow at the University
of Sheffield.
Elizabeth McMahon is a scholar and an artist. She explores the roles of
textiles as status signifiers at the court of Henry VIII. She creates couture
and historic reproduction gowns and embroideries. She completed her
B.S. at Bowling Green State University of Ohio, and an AA in Fashion
Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology. After working in the
fashion industry, she pursued an M.A. in Museum Studies, also at FIT.
She is currently working on her dissertation at Bard Graduate Center,
“Arrayed in the Robes of Royalty: Clothes, colors, and the creation
of Tudor queenly status 1509–1536.” Elizabeth currently works at the
Library at FIT, where she curated the collection of international fashion
periodicals and forecasts. Currently she develops research guides and
videos for the FIT community. She teaches in the Museum Studies
program at FIT, and has written for BGC exhibitions “‘Twixt Art &
Nature’: English Embroidery from the Metropolitan Museum” and
xvi NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

“Dutch New York, Between East and West,” and the Oxford Dictio-
nary of Art Online, as well as worked in the garment collections of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum at FIT.
Aidan Norrie is a historian of monarchy, an Early Career Fellow in
the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Warwick, and the
Managing Editor of The London Journal. Aidan, who has a Ph.D. in
Renaissance Studies from the University of Warwick, is the author of
Elizabeth I and the Old Testament: Biblical Analogies and Providential
Rule (2022), and the coeditor of several collections, including Tudor
and Stuart Consorts: Power, Influence, and Dynasty (2022; with Carolyn
Harris, J. L. Laynesmith, Danna R. Messer, and Elena Woodacre), Women
on the Edge in Early Modern Europe (2019; with Lisa Hopkins), and From
Medievalism to Early-Modernism: Adapting the English Past (2019; with
Marina Gerzic).
Valerie Schutte is an independent scholar who specializes in royal Tudor
women and book dedications. She has edited or coedited four volumes
on Queen Mary I, Shakespeare, and queenship, of which The Palgrave
Handbook of Shakespeare’s Queens (2018) won the 2020 Royal Studies
Journal book prize. Her first monograph is Mary I and the Art of Book
Dedications: Royal Women, Power, and Persuasion (2015), which is the
first comprehensive study of Mary’s books and those dedicated to her.
Schutte’s second monograph, Princesses Mary and Elizabeth Tudor and
the Gift Book Exchange, was published with ARC Humanities Press in
2021. She is currently editing a volume on the making and re-making of
Lady Jane Grey and Mary and writing a cultural biography of Anne of
Cleves.
Johanna C. E. Strong is a final-year Ph.D. candidate at the University of
Winchester under the supervision of Dr. Ellie Woodacre and Dr. Simon
Sandall. Titled “The Making of a Queen: The Effect of Religion, National
Identity, and Gender on Mary I’s Legacy in the English Historical Narra-
tive,” Johanna’s PhD thesis examines the way in which Mary I’s legacy
was posthumously created and how this legacy was perpetuated from
the Elizabethan era through the Stuart period. Her research has been
featured on Winchester Heritage Open Days’ “Hampshire Histbites”
podcast, on the “Talking Tudors” podcast, and on the Team Queens
blog, to which she is a contributing member. She completed her Master
of Arts at Queen’s University in Canada under the supervision of Dr.
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xvii

Jeffrey Collins, researching the political, gendered, and religious contexts

of female monarchy in England. Her doctoral research is funded by the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
 Introduction

Jessica S. Hower and Valerie Schutte

The first day of February 1554 was undeniably a defining moment in the
reign of England’s first queen regnant, Mary I, and it is one of the few
for which she is remembered in a positive light, defying her “bloody”
sobriquet and incumbent poor reputation. Perhaps this is because of the
moment’s rather early date, only six months into her reign, before Mary’s
throne was fully secure, before her marriage to the Habsburg Philip Prince
of Spain was finalized, before her formal realignment with the Pope and
Catholic restoration were complete, and before the Protestant burnings
took place. Perhaps it is because the forceful, empowered, very public
performance that she gave that day bears so much resemblance to the
imagery, rhetoric, and argument made famous by her popularly beloved
half-sister, Elizabeth I; as Judith Richards aptly put it, “few who have
read [what Mary said that day] have doubted its eloquence. The most
cursory reading suggests it was indeed a speech of which Elizabeth might

J. S. Hower (B)
Southwestern University , Georgetown, TX, USA
e-mail: howerj@southwestern.edu
V. Schutte
Independent Researcher, Beaver Falls, PA, USA

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
V. Schutte and J. S. Hower (eds.), Mary I in Writing, Queenship
and Power, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95128-3_1
2 J. S. HOWER AND V. SCHUTTE

well have been proud, and Mary has always received due credit for its
positive impact.”1 Whatever the cause of its survival, even celebration,
Mary’s Guildhall Speech against Sir Thomas Wyatt and the other rebels
threatening her crown in early 1554 is by far the most ubiquitous and
well-known of her utterances, spoken or written—albeit a comparatively
limited distinction for a monarch who for all the recent revisionism still
remains woefully understudied and incompletely understood, outside of
academia and within.
There is much to pick apart and analyze in Mary’s address, as she spoke
to rouse the citizens of London against her enemies, and that is even
before its multiple versions (which number at least twelve contemporary
or near-contemporary variations) are accounted for.2 Many scholars have,
in fact, carried out this vital, critical work, especially in the context of the
broader examinations of the queen and her queenship that have made
the last fifteen years such a watershed in Marian Studies.3 Yet there are
several lines that deserve further attention, and one in particular serves
as an invitation for further research that the contributors in this first
part of a two-volume collection on Mary I seek to answer. According
to Richard Grafton’s Chronicle at Large and Meere History of the Affayres
of England (London, 1569), which contains among the earliest, most
complete, and most frequently cited versions of the Guildhall oration,
Mary opened by explaining that she came before her subjects in her own
person to speak against the rebels who had traitorously and seditiously
risen against her and her people, under the pretense of protesting her
impending nuptials. A much-quoted passage followed, as Mary told her
loving people that the coronation ritual had wedded her to the realm and
its laws, and called on her father’s memory, reminding the audience that
she was his right and true inheritor to the crown of England. Then, Mary
continued, “And this farther I saye vnto you in the worde of a Prince, I
cannot tell how naturally the mother loueth her childe, for I was neuer
the mother of any: But certainely if a Prince and gouernor maye as natu-
rally and as ernestly loue subiectes as the mother doth the childe, then

1 Judith Richards, “Examples and Admonitions: What Mary Demonstrated for Eliza-
beth,” in Tudor Queenship: The Reigns of Mary and Elizabeth, ed. Alice Hunt and Anna
Whitelock (Baskingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 32.
2 Jonathan McGovern, “A Herald’s Account of Mary I’s Oration at the Guildhall (1
February 1554),” Notes and Queries 66, no. 3 (September 2019): 387–388, at 388.
3 Cited below.
 INTRODUCTION 3

assure your selues, that I being your souerigne Lady and Queene do as
earnestly and as tenderly loue & fauor you.”4 The sentence is an undoubt-
edly dense one, layered with meaning and significance that can, in turn,
be unpacked in a number of ways, yet the clause that is most evocative
and pertinent for our purposes comes near the start: “in the worde of a
Prince.” Here, Mary emphasized the means and process of communica-
tion (her “worde”); the matter of gender (using the masculine “prince”);
her royal standing, power, and authority (the capitalized “P”); and did
all of this work through oratory, in a speech (a discrete literary genre).
In this way, the clause is a reminder to take the surviving words from
her reign seriously and interrogate them, to remember the centrality of
gender and constructions of female kingship at work across her rule and
examine them, and to mine the rich, diverse source base in a multiplicity
of genres that the queen and those who surrounded her left behind. It is
a brilliant rejoinder to examine Mary I in Writing.
This two-volume edited collection centers on representations of Queen
Mary I in writing, broadly construed, and the process of writing that
queen into literature and other textual sources. It spans an equally wide
chronological and geographical scope, accounting for the years prior to
her accession in July 1553 through the centuries that followed her death
in November 1558 and for her reach across England, and into Ireland,
Spain, Italy, Russia, and Africa. From the project’s inception, its inten-
tion was to foreground words and language—written, spoken, and acted
out—and, by extension, to draw out matters of and conversations about
rhetoric, imagery, methodology, source base, genre, narrative, form, and
more. In the process, our commitment to applying such approaches to the
first crowned queen regnant of England has only grown, finding in her an
incomparable opportunity to ask new questions and seek new answers that
deepen our understanding of the monarch, her reign, the early modern
era, and modern popular culture.
Bringing together scholars from a host of different fields and sub-fields,
the result is a carefully curated, multi- and interdisciplinary collection that
endeavors to advance the burgeoning field of Marian Studies, which has

4 Richard Grafton, A Chronicle at large and meere History of the affayres of Englande
and Kinges of the same, deduced from the Creation of the worlde, vnto the first habitation
of thys Islande; and so by continuance vnto the first yere of the reigne of our most deere
and souereigne Lady Queene Elizabeth: collected out of sundry Aucthors, whose names are
expressed in the next Page of this leafe (London: 1569), 1333.
4 J. S. HOWER AND V. SCHUTTE

undergone major transformation and revisionism in the last fifteen years.

In this vein, both volumes seize upon and develop the groundbreaking
efforts of Judith Richards, Charles Beem, Susan Doran, Thomas Freeman,
Sarah Duncan, and several of the contributors to the present two books,
among others.5 At the same time, the collection also seeks to contribute
to equally vital, if hitherto largely discrete, scholarly conversations on
the nature and means of representation in Renaissance, Reformation, and
Early Modern Studies and is intent on bridging the gap between history
and literature when it comes to Tudor Studies in the wake of the post-
modern, linguistic, and new historicist turns.6 While several essays and
book chapters do exist on the subject of Mary in text, they are few and
far between and scattered; there is no one volume or other sustained
work that considers how the monarch was written about in documents
and letters as well as how she was used in a diverse array of other literary
genres, from ballads to poetry and plays. Our purpose has been to carry
out precisely this important work, to interrogate Mary and the myth of
Mary in as many forms and styles of writing as possible so as to offer a
wider view of her as daughter, princess, female king, queen consort, wife,
and Tudor. The following essays thus abstractly emphasize and concretely
demonstrate the seminal role of literature and textual rendering in the
making and manipulating of Mary I, her life, her reign, and her world.
Moreover, while comparisons between Mary I and Elizabeth I often
yield fruitful results, the current two volumes focus solely and entirely

5 Judith M. Richards, “Mary Tudor as ‘Sole Queene’?: Gendering Tudor Monarchy,”

The Historical Journal 40, no. 4 (December 1997): 895–924; Richards, Mary Tudor
(London: Routledge, 2008); Charles Beem, The Lioness Roared: The Problems of Female
Rule in English History (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); Susan Doran and
Thomas S. Freeman, eds., Mary Tudor: Old and New Perspectives (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2011); Valerie Schutte, Mary I and the Art of Book Dedications: Royal Women,
Power, and Persuasion (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Sarah Duncan and
Schutte, eds., The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I (Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); Duncan, Mary I: Gender, Power, and Ceremony in the Reign of
England’s First Queen (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Alexander Samson, Mary and Philip:
The Marriage of Tudor England and Habsburg Spain (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 2020).
6 Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1980); Dale Hoak, Tudor Political Culture (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995); Tatiana C. String and Marcus Bull, eds., Tudorism:
Historical Imagination and the Appropriation of the Sixteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011).
 INTRODUCTION 5

on the former and her reign, thereby continuing the massive—and indis-
pensable—effort to recover Mary from the formidable shadow cast by her
younger half-sister and the plethora of Elizabethan historians, chroniclers,
and polemicists who have had an outsized role in establishing the frame-
work for Tudor historiography and adding much of its texture.7 Yet this
is not to suggest that Elizabeth or Elizabethan Studies is absent from this
collection. Indeed, much the opposite is the case.
Several themes, trends, and threads emerge across the twenty essays
included herein. The first is the pivotal role of writing (again, broadly
construed) as a means and product of history, historiography, and popular
culture. Mary I existed/exists in writing, and writing created/creates
Mary I; she was and is at once written about, written, and rewritten,
and that process began before she was born, upon the event of her
parents’ marriage, and continues well after her death. Herein lies the
inspiration for our two volume titles, and it serves as our premier concern
throughout, as each contribution aptly shows how taking text seriously
and interrogating it produce critical new insights that push the scholarly
literature forward.
Second, these chapters thought-provokingly suggest that much of the
most recent, most exciting academic work on Mary takes its stimulus
from and even mirrors the new research that has been carried out on
Elizabeth over the last ten years or so. Scholars are borrowing fruitful,
effective methodologies from examinations of the second Tudor queen
regnant and applying them to her elder half-sister and predecessor, while
also pushing even further ahead, asking questions of Mary that cannot
be asked of Elizabeth, such as the impact of her marriage to Philip II to
Spain and failure to produce a living child and heir. It bears noting that
many of these studies have been published in the seminal and unrivaled
“Queenship and Power” Series published by Palgrave MacMillan, which
this collection is honored and humbled to be a part of.
We realize that this development—applying units of analysis and
types of sources from Elizabethan Studies to Marian Studies—is due

7 Alice Hunt and Anna Whitelock, eds., Tudor Queenship: The Reigns of Mary and
Elizabeth (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Schutte, Princesses Mary and Elizabeth
Tudor and the Gift Book Exchange (Amsterdam: Arc Humanities Press, 2021). In this we
follow on from Beem, whose landmark book on female kingship in England included a
chapter on Mary, but declined to include one on Elizabeth, see The Lioness Roared—a
remarkable and telling decision.
6 J. S. HOWER AND V. SCHUTTE

to current trends that go well beyond the Tudor century, for example
elevating representation and fashioning/self-fashioning; taking myths,
language, and imagery seriously; appreciating the power of physical
objects and patronage; delving into wardrobe and other frequently over-
looked account books and inventories; expanding geographical scope to
fight against Anglocentrism and the insularity of British History with
continental European, Atlantic, or global points of view; exploring histor-
ical figures as conceived through “foreign” or “outside” eyes; considering
“fact” alongside “fiction”; and, most broadly, employing non-traditional
sources.8 Nevertheless, it seems imperative to acknowledge that the
always-in-fashion study of Elizabeth is the most likely immediate impetus

8 Carole Levin, The Heart and Stomach of a King: Elizabeth I and the Politics of
Sex and Power (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994); Leah S. Marcus,
Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth Rose, eds., Elizabeth I: Collected Works (Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 2000); Catherine Loomis, The Death of Elizabeth I: Remembering
and Reconstructing the Virgin Queen (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Alessandra
Petrina and Laura Tosi, Representations of Elizabeth I in Early Modern Culture (Hamp-
shire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); Donatella Montini and Iolanda Plescia, ed. Elizabeth I
in Writing: Language, Power and Representation in Early Modern England (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2018); Julia M. Walker, ed. Dissing Elizabeth: Negative Representa-
tions of Gloriana (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998); Susan Doran and Thomas F.
Freeman, eds., The Myth of Elizabeth (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); Julia M.
Walker, The Elizabeth Icon, 1603–2003 (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); Estelle
Paranque, ed., Remembering Queens and Kings of Early Modern England and France:
Reputation, Reinterpretation, and Reincarnation (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019);
Janet Arnold, Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d: The Inventories of the Wardrobe of
Robes Prepared in July 1600 (Leeds: Maney, 1988); Jane Lawson, ed., The Elizabethan
New Year’s Gift Exchanges, 1559–1603 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Nicholas
Canny, ed., The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Origins of Empire (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1998); David Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British
Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Charles Beem, ed. The Foreign
Relations of Elizabeth I (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); Rayne Allinson, A
Monarchy of Letters: Royal Correspondence and English Diplomacy In the Reign of Eliza-
beth I (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Carlo M. Bajetta, Guillaume Coatalen, and
Jonathan Gibson, ed. Elizabeth I’s Foreign Correspondence: Letters, Rhetoric, and Politics
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Paranque, Elizabeth I of England Through Valois
Eyes: Power, Representation, and Diplomacy in the Reign of the Queen, 1558–1588 (New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019); Carlo M. Bajetta, ed. and trans. Elizabeth I’s Italian
Letters (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017); Michael Dobson and Nicola J. Watson,
England’s Elizabeth: An Afterlife in Fame and Fantasy (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2002); Susan Doran and Thomas S. Freeman, eds., Tudors and Stuarts on Film: Historical
Perspectives (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); Sue Parrill and William B. Robison,
The Tudors on Film and Television (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company,
1998); Robison, ed., History, Fiction, and The Tudors: Sex, Politics, Power, and Artistic
 INTRODUCTION 7

and that it harbors a wonderful potential to inspire and invigorate Marian

Studies. Further, when the techniques are applied, rather than merely
the findings, as is the case herein, the risks of teleological thinking fall
significantly, and the rewards come even more fully to the fore.
The present collection argues, then, that the time has come to ask
the same cutting-edge questions and deploy the same rich sources now
animating scholars of Elizabeth to Mary, privileging perspectives and
pieces that have been used to great effect with the former and reaping
the benefits for the latter. This is a potentially pioneering shift, and it is
one that our contributors have the luxury of carrying out, as we stand on
the shoulders of existing scholarship. Thus far, in the comparatively few
years that it has existed as its own vibrant sub-field, Marian historiography
has fixed on making the case for its subject’s importance, alongside and
even above Elizabeth I’s. This effort is not yet complete, by any means,
but it has made a great deal of headway in the last decade and a half, spear-
headed by many of the authors mentioned above, who have done a superb
job of recovering the history and myth of Mary I. This expert scholarly
literature allows us to take the next step and to offer the next interven-
tion: to study Mary as more than mere yardstick to measure, instruct,
or warn Elizabeth and to make the case for Mary’s significance indepen-
dent of any precedents or lessons she may have set for her sister—but,
vitally, all without neglecting the tools that have made the historiog-
raphy of Elizabeth so rich. There is, in other words, no need to throw
the methodological baby out with the Elizabethan bathwater.
In many ways, the historiography on Mary I has followed a discern-
able, if productively non-linear, path: scholarship on Elizabeth (especially
in the vein of Women’s, Feminist, and Gender Studies) provided a call to
arms, prompting an early wave of scholars who asked why these hugely
significant currents were not being applied to the first Tudor queen. A
number of comparative works on Tudor queenship followed, as did others
that took a somewhat more holistic view of the mid-Tudor era, rejecting
the theory of an all-out crisis and nuancing the typical narrative of the
period. Then came several biographies, many straddling the line between
popular and scholarly, focused solely on Mary and on uncovering the

License in the Showtime Television Series (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); Eliza-
beth Evenden-Kenyon, “Mary Tudor - From the Page to the Screen: Visual Transposition
and Transformation of Queen Mary I of England in Carlos, Rey Emperador,” Journal of
European Television History & Culture 10, no. 19 (2021): 16–27.
8 J. S. HOWER AND V. SCHUTTE

reality behind her “bloody” reputation. Lastly, we have seen some degree
of silo-ing, with Mary treated separately, if often with oblique or implicit
reference to how much she innovated for her sister’s benefit.9
These two volumes do not propose to bring Elizabeth wholly or even
partly back into the equation nor to reverse historiographical course, but
rather to take the next step along this trajectory by employing Elizabethan
approaches and perspectives for Mary. The collection demonstrates the
continued importance of evaluating Mary in her own right, as “sole
queen,” and showcases some of the means by which to do so, all while
furthering the push against the highly gendered, highly xenophobic, and
highly anti-Catholic “bloody” epithet. It finds that the current state of
the field and the extent to which it has progressed since 2008 affords us
the luxury to do more with the Marian era, offering more detail, more
thorough-going analysis, and more critical study in the ways that those
who work on the rest of the sixteenth century have, without fear that the
specter of Elizabeth will return to seize the spotlight.
The essays that follow also engage several other, smaller but equally
important themes worth highlighting at the outset. Most important
among them are those that have dictated the organizational scheme for
volume one, namely the variety and complexity of queenship, the signif-
icance of Mary’s accession moment, the nature and portrayal of royal
power, the major role played by physical artifacts, and how various and
later English contexts shaped remembrances of Mary in the immediate
aftermath of her death. Clearly, even when our sights are largely confined

9 Levin, Jo Eldridge Carney, and Debra Barrett-Graves, eds., “High and Mighty Queens”
of Early Modern England: Realities and Representations (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,
2003); David Loades, Mary Tudor: The Tragical History of the First Queen of England
(Kew: National Archives, 2006); Eamon Duffy and Loades, eds., The Church of Mary
Tudor: Catholic Christendom 1300–1700 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006); Beem, The
Lioness Roared; Richards, Mary Tudor; Linda Porter, The First Queen of England: The
Myth of “Bloody Mary” (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2008); David Loades, Mary
Tudor (Gloucestershire: Amberley, 2009); Whitelock, Mary Tudor: England’s First Queen
(London: Bloomsbury, 2009); Hunt and Whitelock, eds., Tudor Queenship; Doran and
Freeman, eds., Mary Tudor; John Edwards, Mary I: England’s Catholic Queen (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2011); Duncan, Mary I; Beem and Dennis Moore, eds.,
The Name of a Queen: William Fleetwood’s Itinerarium ad Windsor (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2013); Vivienne Westbrook and Evenden, eds., Catholic Renewal and Protes-
tant Resistance in Marian England (London: Routledge, 2015); Schutte, Mary I and the
Art of Book Dedications; Carole Levin and Christine Stewart-Nuñez, eds., Scholars and
Poets Talk about Queens (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Duncan and Schutte,
eds., The Birth of a Queen; Samson, Mary and Philip.
 INTRODUCTION 9

to the domestic sphere and budding larger British World, the multi-
faceted display and real practice of regal magnificence was at the core
of the Marian regime. In volume two, the contributors are motivated by
different—if connected and no less important—concerns, specifically how
closely the queen and her monarchy were and continue to be intertwined
with individuals, forces, and developments from and in the European
continent as well as the vibrant afterlife—positive and negative—of Mary
in mass media. For this entire second group of contributors, under-
standing the queen historically means doing so well outside the confines
of England and of the mid-sixteenth century.
Other topics transcend the book’s sections and, indeed, the collection’s
two volumes. Most notably, several essays emphasize contemporary lack
of attention and concern for Mary’s gender, something that has greatly
shaped her reputation and her perceived failings as a monarch are always
tied to it. Strikingly, Courtney Herber, Valerie Schutte, and Aidan Norrie
all demonstrate, however, that texts written during Mary’s reign neither
focused on Mary’s gender nor apologized for it. They, in turn, speak
to a wider point made across numerous essays that Mary’s contempo-
rary reputation was far more positive than much of previous scholarship
would suggest; negative renderings came later, as the final sections of both
volumes bear out. Similarly, sources used by a number of the authors here
indicate that Mary and her reign were greatly tied to (and perhaps apol-
ogized for) divine providence. There was constantly an idea that Mary
achieved the throne with God’s help or favor. Similarly, according to
Carolyn Colbert, Mary met a sanctified end through God’s grace. Never-
theless, it is telling that Mary’s religion and the religion of her subjects
is not a paramount concern in either volume, an indication, perhaps,
that specialized work in this area is not attracting as much attention as
it once was, even if Colbert and Eilish Gregory indicate its centrality in
later sixteenth and early seventeenth-century debates about Mary’s life
and death.10 Theresa Earenfight looks back to appreciate the presence of
Catherine of Aragon in influencing Mary’s queenship, whereas chapters

10 William Wizeman, The Theology and Spirituality of Mary Tudor’s Church (London:
Routledge, 2006); Eamon Duffy, Fires of Faith: Catholic England Under Mary Tudor
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009); John Edwards and Ronald Truman, eds.,
Reforming Catholicism in the England of Mary Tudor (London: Routledge, 2017); Fred-
erick E. Smith, “Reinventing the Counter-Reformation in Marian England, 1553–1558,”
The Historical Journal (2020): 1–23, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X20000394.
10 J. S. HOWER AND V. SCHUTTE

by Herber, Norrie, and Jessica S. Hower look ahead, appreciating how

much of what existing literature currently associates with Elizabeth—from
martial shows of royal authority to biblical analogy and empire—are actu-
ally rich in the reign of Mary, and Hower’s attention to Anglo-Russian
dynamics is further developed in Alexander Samson’s contribution to
volume two. In addition, Hower, Jane Lawson, Elizabeth McMahon, and
Emilie M. Brinkman, the last of these also in volume two, isolate the
visual and otherwise non-textual alongside the textual, in their attention
to processions, ceremonies, gifts, dress, and rituals, often meditating on
how words were used to represent tangible things and intangible ideas.
In volume two, the theme of authority first introduced by Earenfight and
Michaela Baca, then carried into the seventeenth century by Gregory,
takes center stage, addressed by Samantha Perez and Darcy Kern in the
context of Continental European politics. Most obviously in this second
set of essays, foreign perspectives—especially, but also beyond, Spain—
and modern representations—primarily in film, television, and historical
novels, but also in the media—are absolutely paramount, unpacked by
Derek M. Taylor, Perez, Kern, Kelsey J. Ihinger, and Tamara Peréz-
Fernández for the former, and William B. Robison, Brinkman, Samson,
and Stephanie Russo for the latter. The broadly posthumous, mean-
while, is the purview not only of those contributors examining twenty-
and twenty-first-century sources, but equally of Johanna C. E. Strong,
Colbert, and Gregory, creating a nice continuity from volume one to two.
Most excitingly, without fail, every single contributor grapples either with
new sources in already-established ways or old sources in new ways, and
the breadth and depth of research, especially across genre and subspe-
cialty, is remarkable. Together, these chapters allow us to see where Mary
and Marian Studies have been and where they are moving now.
Volume one, and thus the larger two-part collection that it inaugurates,
begins with a pair of essays that identify and play with the distinc-
tion between two highly important kinds of queen and queenship, the
“Regnant and Consort,” underscoring the differences between them
as well as their fungibility, the ability of one sort to counsel the other,
the possibility of failing at one while succeeding at another, and their
gendered connotations. Equally, and fittingly for the eight essays that
follow, the authors foreground how both facets of Mary I’s monarchy
emerge in writing, whether by her own hand or that of her mother.
Theresa Earenfight’s chapter explores Catherine of Aragon as a model
of queenship for Mary, a practical, real-life exemplar and learned resource
 INTRODUCTION 11

who counseled the princess in that which could not be learned from books
or professional pedagogues alone. Specifically, Earenfight highlights two
letters written by Catherine to Mary at particularly decisive moments in
the 1520 s and 30 s, and argues via a close, critical reading of both,
that the texts did more than offer motherly advice; rather, they served as
crucial educational tools, instructing on matters of politics and queenship,
duties and challenges. Earenfight shows why and how Catherine was suit-
able for, even successful in, teaching Mary to be a regnant queen, even if
she was not one herself, and evinces the still-unfolding history of Tudor
queenship. In a letter from 1525, Catherine demonstrates both a moth-
er’s love and concern for her daughter’s Latin skills, something necessary
for a successful European ruler. In a letter from 1534, a direct response
to the First Act of Succession and the contradictory judgment of Pope
Clement VII, the queen consort instructs the princess on how to navi-
gate both God’s and her father’s commandments, even when those two
paramount forces are in opposition. Mary ultimately obeyed her mother’s
advice, trusting God would be steadfast in His support of her.
Michaela Baca’s chapter takes up and then takes apart the traditional
binary used to examine Mary I, that of male king and female queen, with
its highly gendered as well as confessional meanings and implications.
In its place, she proposes a new duality also embodied by the monarch:
regnant and consort. The result is to reframe Mary’s queenship, appre-
ciate how her titles shifted over time, and unearth her successes alongside
her failures. After exploring the construction of her “sole” queenship from
July 1553, Baca suggests that it was only after Mary’s marriage to Philip of
Spain that Mary’s authority appeared subverted, linguistically and symbol-
ically, thus leading to a widespread conception that Philip wielded political
power over Mary. Baca succinctly demonstrates how Mary’s signature,
phrasing on royal proclamations, and her Great Seal conveyed regnant and
consort queenship. She argues that prior to the marriage, Mary’s signa-
ture, seal, and proclamations blended traditions of monarch and consort,
demonstrating the queen’s own understanding of her unique position.
After her marriage, those same images were subverted by the addition of
the images of her husband, in which they were represented as co-rulers,
and even instances in which Philip appears to be superior. With these latter
representations as evidence, Mary has come down to us in the historical
record as a failure, despite the far more complicated picture that Baca
paints.
12 J. S. HOWER AND V. SCHUTTE

With our terms and parameters of discussion now set, we proceed to

the topic of “Rise and Representation.” The next two essays isolate
the moment of Mary I’s accession to the throne in July 1553, privi-
leging the way in which various types of writing, intended to be read and
heard aloud, for private and public audiences, showcased the queen and
conceived of her capabilities. Notably, both explode simplistic assump-
tions and defy the myth of a queen immediately or categorically castigated
for her gender or religion.
Courtney Herber’s chapter interrogates how sixteenth-century sources
represented Mary’s accession, especially the ways in which they portray
her martial abilities and activities. To do so, Herber rallies a wide
array of personal diaries, ambassadorial letters, and official chronicles,
from England and the European Continent, crossing genre and national
borders to create as comprehensive and nuanced an appraisal of contem-
porary and near-contemporary renderings as possible, and place them in
conversation with earlier depictions of Mary’s female progenitors, Isabel
I of Spain and Catherine of Aragon. As Herber appreciates, the diaries
and letters were not meant to influence opinions of Mary’s reign for
future readers, but to record “facts,” whereas the chronicles were sanc-
tioned to make and disseminate a specific argument. Herber reveals that
in unofficial accounts that were written first- and second-hand, Mary was
written as a decisive, capable queen, a woman of action, and a leader of
men. Perceptions of Mary in state-sanctioned texts differed, in that they
presented the queen as wise, but not physically brave, passive, and divinely
ordained. Herber concludes that Mary’s actions as a martial queen have
heretofore been downplayed and that she should be regarded as a warrior
queen.
Valerie Schutte offers a verbal portrait of Queen Mary I in the popular
literature that was produced upon her accession. Schutte demonstrates
that in July 1553, authors and polemicists used a variety of genres—
ballads, hymns, pamphlets, proclamations, and poems—to celebrate the
new monarch and highlight her legitimacy as the inheritor of Henry
VIII. These authors concluded that this hereditary right was crucial to
her queenship, and never questioned that right based on her gender.
Schutte argues that commonly accepted tropes about Mary’s accession,
such as the common preferment of a Protestant monarch, simply are not
corroborated in the source material.
Once on the throne, Mary I sought to define her rule, and so
too did those around her. In this complicated, multifaceted process of
 INTRODUCTION 13

“Constructing Kingship,” especially female kingship, which the next two

chapters home in on, multiple themes and symbols came to the fore, both
positive and negative. Yet paramount among them were the Bible and
empire, and, in both areas, Mary set powerful precedent for the second
Tudor queen regnant with whom they are more typically associated.
Aidan Norrie’s chapter analyzes the biblical analogies applied by
polemicists to Mary I from the outset of her reign. They argue that
these comparisons served not only as a means of counsel and critique,
but as religio-political devices by which to legitimize the monarch as a
Catholic, female king. In this, Norrie explicitly demonstrates precedent
for the more oft-cited and of-studied Elizabethan use of such analogies,
yet the author also breaks new ground for Mary alone, beginning with
their periodization of the reign into the accession moment, marriage to
Philip II of Spain, less volatile “middle years,” and much sought-after
pregnancies. Norrie shows that at the start of Mary’s reign, invocation of
comparable biblical figures supported and bolstered her authority. Then,
at the announcement of her marriage and Wyatt’s Rebellion, such analo-
gies served to counsel the Queen amid concerns about how and when
Mary would return England to the Catholic fold. Norrie concludes that
Mary’s supporters followed in the tradition of using biblical analogies,
a custom central to the repertoire of Tudor royal iconography, with no
concern for the monarch’s gender.
Jessica S. Hower takes seriously Mary I’s invocations of imperial
power and territorially expansive rule, which began at her accession and
continued until her death, to explore the relationship among England’s
first regnant queen, her queenship, and empire-building. Merging Marian
Studies with the History of the British Empire, two fields that have,
hitherto, remained largely discrete, she argues that not only was the
ideology of empire called up and adapted to serve the specific needs of
this monarch and monarchy, but that pivotal shifts also took place in the
practical realm of empire-building. The result was a watershed moment in
early modern imperial history, which has since been overlooked, marred
by a narrative of crisis and failure. Highlighting domestic representa-
tions that called upon imperial language and imagery alongside overseas
projects and contexts in Ireland, Russia, and Guinea, Hower finds in
Mary’s reign the development of several key elements fundamental to the
form and tenor of the British Empire: colonial plantation, the joint-stock
trading company, and conceptions of the African “other”.
14 J. S. HOWER AND V. SCHUTTE

No matter the centrality or even reality of highflying contemporary

rhetoric in the religious or political spheres, however, Mary I’s court was
unmistakably a Renaissance court and marked by the “Material Manifes-
tations” of that hallmark cultural moment. As such, physical items and
the way in which they were bestowed and recorded are equally impor-
tant avenues through which to understand her reign, as two subsequent
chapters reveal.
Jane Lawson locates Mary I and the critical role she played in devel-
oping the New Year’s gift exchange into a practice suitable for a queen
regnant, using the ritual and its textual manifestation (the roll) as a
window into broader courtly dynamics. Lawson relates the important
innovations made to the New Year’s gift exchange under the earlier
Tudors, from formalizing and standardizing the ceremony under Henry
VIII to the adoption of durable vellum to record the gifts under Edward
VI. Offering a careful reading of the order, number, and type of gifts,
she shows that Mary’s reign brought still further innovation and telling
choices, finding, for example, Philip II’s exclusion from the 1557 gift roll
(the only one extant from Mary’s reign) to be a signal of his disfavor. With
Mary’s accession came the inclusion of a Sundry Gifts section added to
accommodate the different sort of gift-giving warranted by a female king,
the rise of certain types of gifts known to be in the queen’s favor. and
a list of gifts given to the Maids of Honor, previously excluded entirely
or conveyed through the queen consort. Lawson thus demonstrates how
Mary and her courtiers made changes to the New Year’s gift exchange
appropriate to a regnant queen, and to this particular queen’s other objec-
tives and concerns, like the return of Catholicism and the creation of a
loyal household made up of life-long courtiers and servants, some who
served the Tudors for multiple generations.
Elizabeth McMahon gives an assessment of Mary’s queenship through
her dress, specifically deploying the monarch’s privy purse expenses,
account books, and gift-giving as a means by which to chart Mary’s
fortunes at court and to convey the central role of material magnificence
to maintaining and asserting the crown’s political, social, and cultural
preeminence. From the time she was a princess, McMahon charges, Mary
was dressed the part as the daughter of an important European king.
Not altogether surprisingly, at times when Mary was out of favor, the
expenses spent on her dress reflected her precarious situation. At the
birth of Princess Elizabeth, Mary’s clothes and jewels were redirected to
her younger half-sister. It was only once Mary conformed herself to her
 INTRODUCTION 15

father’s newly settled church that her material prospects increased, and
she too conformed her dress and gifts of largess to fit Henry VIII’s estab-
lishment, a means by which to gain his favor, prove her legitimacy, and
demonstrate some agency. It was only after his death that Mary was able
to fully choose her own dress, and, when she did, it was in distinct emula-
tion of his royal magnificence and in keeping with his appreciation of the
power of appearance and patronage.
Much as the tangible trappings of Mary I’s reign outlived the queen
herself, so too did efforts to define her. Indeed, as the final three essays in
this volume demonstrate, the process of constructing the “Memory and
Myth” of Mary began almost immediately upon her death in November
1558—that is, if it had not already begun during her lifetime. In the
words penned by Elizabethan, Jacobean, and post-Restoration commen-
tators, some of them her ardent Protestant critics and others her stalwart
Catholic co-religionists, the posthumous image of England’s first queen
regnant and, especially her coronation, marriage to Philip II of Spain, and
death, took shape against the tumult of the late-Tudor and Stuart worlds.
These chapters underscore the mutability of the Marian moment, while
also revealing a great deal about the contexts in which the queen was
reinvented and her unfortunate legacy cemented.
Johanna C. E. Strong traces the afterlife of Mary I and Philip II’s
marriage in the reign of Elizabeth I, demonstrating the perceived rele-
vance of the 1554 Anglo-Spanish union to contentious debates and
rampant fears about foreign policy, the Black Legend, budding notions
of national identity, and Elizabeth’s own fractious marriage negotiations
later in the century. Calling on a diverse set of source material, from a
sermon to pamphlets and popular chronicles, Strong first rehearses how
the wedding was understood in its own time and place. She then shows
how tensions over Mary’s marriage to Philip and associations with Spain
were manipulated by Elizabethan writers and leveraged to voice their
own, very present worries about their queen’s potential spouses and the
implications of a non-English match, as well as the threats posed by the
Spanish Armada and Catholic League. These narratives, in turn, reveal
as much if not more about the Elizabethan England in which they were
written than about the Marian history that they claim to convey. Strong
concludes that Mary’s marriage became so tied to concerns over Spanish
power and cruelty that it not only impinged upon her half-sister’s reign,
but had a lasting impact on perceptions of Mary as a wife and queen.
16 J. S. HOWER AND V. SCHUTTE

Carolyn Colbert examines a set of Catholic texts that describe Mary’s

death as a counterpoint to the narrative created by John Foxe in his
partisan yet hugely popular and enduring Actes and Monuments. Though
all different genres, the three mid-sixteenth- and early seventeenth-
century pieces at the heart of Colbert’s analysis all paint a similar picture
of Mary and her (ostensibly) martyrological death. While Mary is not the
sole focus of any of these texts, each work portrays her death similarly and
leverages it didactically, as a lesson for an England that was, they feared,
slipping back to the Catholic faith. Pressing the queen’s devotion and
godliness to Rome, this literature marked Mary’s death as “good” and
tied it to that of her cousin, Cardinal Reginald Pole, the pair twinned as
martyrs for a true faith that they had endured trial and tribulation in life
to uphold. Mary thus became a potent rhetorical tool, representing exem-
plary Catholic living and dying. Colbert concludes that the three authors,
two contemporary and one more than a half-century later, all produced
strikingly similar accounts of Mary’s deathbed performance. United in
their Catholicism, and despite using different genres, they understood
Mary to have endured earthly sufferings in preparation for her eternal
reward.
Eilish Gregory studies Catholic remembrances of Mary I amid the
Popish Plot and Exclusion Crisis of the late seventeenth century. For both
of these events, which raised the specter of the Catholic James, Duke of
York ascending to the throne upon the death of his brother and contem-
plated subverting the line of succession to install his Protestant daughter
instead, politicians, polemicists, and pamphleteers from the newly estab-
lished Whig and Tory parties recalled Mary’s reign and used it as an
example to further their cause. Gregory shows that on the Whig side,
this meant positing the Queen as an example of the devastation, cruelty,
and foreign influence that would, by their understanding, inevitably ensue
under the rule of a Catholic monarch. Conversely, for the Tories, it meant
rallying Mary to prove the importance of rightful, lawful hereditary rule.
Gregory thus argues that Mary played such a significant, lasting role in
the 1670 s and 1680 s because the Protestant burnings and marriage to
Philip that marked her reign resonated so powerfully with contemporary
fears of popery and tyranny over a century later. These years, by exten-
sion, cemented her “bloody” memory. However, no matter how much
Mary was vilified, Gregory notes, Stuart authors did not all paint the
same picture of Mary and found ways to both pity her for abandonment
by her husband and praise her for her piety.
Consort and Regnant
 “By Your Loving Mother”: Lessons
in Queenship from Catherine of Aragon
to Her Daughter, Mary

Theresa Earenfight

How does a woman become a queen? What does it take to govern? To

answer these questions, we naturally start by looking at a woman’s formal
education. When we think about Princess Mary’s training to be a queen,
we look specifically at her tutors at court, men who were hired to teach
her philosophy, theology, and languages. These tutors were part of coterie
of influential writers that included Juan Luis Vives, Desiderius Erasmus,
Thomas More, Thomas Linacre, John Colet, Richard Whitford, Giles Du
West, and John Leland that provided a rich intellectual milieu.1 Among
these men, Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives literally wrote the book
that set the curriculum for her and guided the tutors who staffed the

1 Timothy Elston, “Transformation or Continuity? Sixteenth-Century Education and

the Legacy of Catherine of Aragon, Mary I and Juan Luis Vives,” in “High and Mighty
Queens” of Early Modern England: Realities and Representations, ed. Carole Levin, Jo
Eldridge Carney, and Debra Barrett-Graves (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 11–
26.

T. Earenfight (B)
Seattle University, Seattle, WA, USA
e-mail: THERESA@seattleu.edu

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 19

Switzerland AG 2022
V. Schutte and J. S. Hower (eds.), Mary I in Writing, Queenship
and Power, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95128-3_2
20 T. EARENFIGHT

royal classroom.2 These men provided the foundations of Mary’s educa-

tion, taught her Latin and Greek, and stressed the discipline needed to
prepare her for a suitable marriage and a life in the public eye. By the time
Mary was old enough to begin her formal studies, however, it seemed
evident that she would be an only child and would inherit the realm
from her father, Henry VIII. She would need more than grammar and
theology, though, even if she shared with her husband the actual, day-to-
day governing of the realm. She needed something those men could not
give her. She needed practical advice on queenship. For that, there was no
one better qualified to guide her than her mother, the superbly educated
Queen Catherine of Aragon.
Catherine’s plan for Mary’s education was based on the premise that a
liberal education was the foundation of the political culture, with a goal
to train Mary for a life that would blend marriage and motherhood with
duties in the household and at court.3 Didactic works such as Anne de
France’s conduct book, Les Enseignements d’Anne de France (Letters for
My Daughter), or Christine de Pizan’s education manual, Le livre des trois
vertus (Book of htree Virtues) provided both practical and moral advice
on what a princess should know.4 Catherine’s mother, Queen Isabel I,
gathered at her court a community of Spanish and continental humanist
writers who Catherine later brought to England.5 Aysha Pollnitz, Valerie
Schutte, Lorraine Attreed, and Alexandra Winkler argue convincingly that

2 Juan Luis Vives, The Education of a Christian Woman: A Sixteenth-Century Manual,

ed. and trans. Charles Fantazzi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).
3 Aysha Pollnitz, Princely Education in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge University
Press, 2015).
4 Anna Dronzek, “Gendered Theories of Education in Fifteenth-Century Conduct
Books,” Medieval Cultures 29 (2001): 135–159; Anne de France, Anne of France: Lessons
for my Daughter, ed. and trans. Sharon L. Jansen (Rochester: Boydell and Brewer, 2004);
and Tracy Adams, “Appearing Virtuous: Christine de Pizan’s Le livre des trois vertus
and Anne de France’s Les Enseignements d’Anne de France,” in Virtue Ethics for Women
1250–1500, ed. Karen Green and Constant Mews (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011), 115–131.
5 María Isabel del Val Valdivieso, “La educación en la corte de la Reina Católica,”
Miscelánea Comillas: Revista de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales, 69, no. 134 (2011), 255–
273; Emma Cahill Marrón, “Serenissimae Anglie Reginae Erasmus Roterdami dono misit:
Catalina de Aragón y la comisión de obras humanistas,” Titivillus: International Journal
of Rare Book: Revista Internacional sobre Libro Antiguo (2015): 227–36; and Theresa
Earenfight, “Regarding Catherine of Aragon,” in Scholars and Poets Talk about Queenship,
ed. Carole Levin and Christine Stewart-Nuñez (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015),
137–157.
 “BY YOUR LOVING MOTHER” … 21

this thriving humanist discourse in England laid the foundations of Mary’s

practice of queenship.6 Catherine built on this foundation and supple-
mented books with her own lived experience. Her mentorship is evident
in two letters from her to Mary at two difficult moments: in 1525 when
Mary was sent to Ludlow for training in governance at the Council of
Wales, and in 1534, when she was declared illegitimate and disinherited
by her father. Garrett Mattingly analyzed these letters to illuminate the
emotional turmoil Catherine faced and to highlight her maternal senti-
ments and stubborn defiance, but they are much more than that.7 I argue
that Catherine’s letters of advice to Mary on how to navigate dangerous
political dynamics are also a political statement and a brief summary of
Tudor queenship written at a key moment in English history. In this brief
lesson on Tudor queenship, she shares with Mary the contradictions and
responsibilities of queenship.
The letters are important political documents of counsel and advice
from a queen consort to her daughter who would be queen regnant.
Both inspiring and cautionary, the letters reflect a lifetime of learning that
was both bookish and practical. Catherine actively promoted learning and
supported scholars at Oxford and Cambridge. She hired the tutors, care-
fully supervised their work, and surrounded Mary with noble men and
women at court who shared a love of learning.8 Catherine knew that
Mary would need an education at least as good as the one she received,
one that stressed the ideas of the proper social role of a princess while
providing a rigorous education in an intellectual milieu where literacy
was expected and cultural patronage the norm.9 Although she was a

6 Aysha Pollnitz, “Christian Women or Sovereign Queens? The Schooling of Mary and
Elizabeth,” in Tudor Queenship, ed. Alice Hunt and Anna Whitelock (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2010), 127–142; Valerie Schutte, “‘To the Illustrious Queen’: Katherine of
Aragon and Early Modern Book Dedications,” in Women during the English Reformations:
Renegotiating Gender and Religious Identity, ed. Julie A. Chappell and Kaely A. Kramer
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 15–28; and Lorraine Attreed and Alexandra
Winkler, “Faith and Forgiveness: Lessons in Statecraft from Queen Mary Tudor,” The
Sixteenth Century Journal 36, no. 4 (2005), 971–89.
7 Garrett Mattingly, Catherine of Aragon (Boston: Little Brown, 1941), 230–231, 406–
408.
8 Cahill Marrón, “Serenissimae Anglie Reginae,” 976.
9 Catherine’s tutors were Andrés Miranda, a Dominican at the monastery of Santo
Domingo (Burgos), Beatriz Galindo (la Latina, “the Latinist”), and the brothers Antonio
and Alessandro Geraldino. Val Valdivieso, “La educación en la corte,” 255–273.
22 T. EARENFIGHT

queen consort, not a sovereign queen, Catherine knew what was to be

expected of Mary should she rule as a queen regnant because her mother,
Isabel of Castile, was one. Catherine spent her childhood at her mother’s
side and watched Isabel govern forcefully and skillfully in her own right
alongside a fellow sovereign king, Fernando of Aragon.10 One of Cather-
ine’s tutors, Alessandro Geraldino accompanied her to England in 1501,
served as her confessor, and wrote De eruditione nobelium puellarum (On
the Education of Noble Girls, 1501), at Isabel’s request.11 At age twelve,
Catherine was expected to exercise discretion in her comportment and
her studies included music, and she could speak French, English, a bit
of German, and Latin, in addition to Castilian.12 Another tutor, Beatriz
Galindo noted that Catherine surpassed her mother in Latin learning.13
She owned a breviary and studied Christianized versions of Classical
philosophy on virtue, justice, and proper queenly behavior and natural
science concerning medical understandings of the differences between the
sexes.14 Her religious studies were complemented by close contact with
theological writings on the Inquisition. She would have read, or known
of, works that dealt with the education of women set in the context of
the querelle des femmes genre, a literary debate on the propriety of female
rule that included Juan Rodriquez de la Camara’s El triunfo de las donas

10 Theresa Earenfight, “Two Bodies, One Spirit: Isabel and Fernando’s Construction
of Monarchical Partnership,” in Questioning the Queen: Isabel I of Castile 500 Years
Later, ed. Barbara Weissberger (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2008), 3–18; Elston,
“Transformation or Continuity?,” 11–26.
11 Isabel continued to pay annuities to Alessandro Geraldino (“maestro de las ynfantes”)
until her death in 1504. Antonio de la Torre and E. A. de la Torre, eds., Cuentas
de Gonzalo Baeza, tesorero de Isabel la Católica, 2 vols. (Madrid: Consejo Superior de
Investigaciones Científicas, 1955), vol. 2, 332–333; and Peggy Liss, Isabel the Queen: Life
and Times, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 16–20.
12 Rafael Domínguez Casas, “Las Casas de las Reinas hispano-portuguesas de Juan II a
los Reyes Católicos,” in Las relaciones discretas entre las Monarquías Hispana y Portuguesa:
Las Casas de las Reinas (siglos XV–XIX), ed. José Martínez Millán and Maria Paula
Marçal Lourenço (Madrid, Ediciones Polifemo 1, 2008, 233–274; Tess Knighton, “Isabel
of Castile and Her Music Books: Franco-Flemish Song in Fifteenth-century Spain,” Queen
Isabel I of Castile: Power, Patronage, Persona, ed. Barbara F. Weissberger (Woodbridge,
Tamesis, 2008), 29–52.
13 Bethany Aram, Juana the Mad: Sovereignty and Dynasty in Renaissance Europe
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 24–27; Liss, Isabel the Queen. 286.
14 Dronzek, “Gendered Theories of Education,” 135–159.
 “BY YOUR LOVING MOTHER” … 23

(The Triumph of Women, 1443), Alvaro de Luna’s El libro de las virtu-

osas y claras mugeres (The Book of Virtuous and Famous Women, 1446),
Martín Alonso de Córdoba’s Jardín de la nobles doncellas (The Garden
of Noble Maidens, 1468), and Francesc Eiximenis’s manual for female
instruction, the Carro de las donas (The Carriage of Women, fifteenth-
century).15 She read or knew of Juan de Flores’s Grisel and Mirabella,
The Slander against Women, and The Defense of Ladies against Slan-
derers , which may have been dedicated to Queen Isabel.16 Catherine was
prepared for the dismissive attitude of men who underestimated the intel-
lect and abilities of a queen consort, a princess, and, ultimately, a queen
regnant. She gave Mary an education as good or better than any man at
court.
But Catherine had more to offer Mary than the fruits of her own
impressive humanist education. She was the only woman in Mary’s life
who had direct experience with being a queen, an ambassador, an advisor
to the king, and a regent during a period of warfare. Catherine was
schooled in queenship by women who knew well the perils and joys of
the job—her mother and mother-in-law, Elizabeth York.17 She learned
that a queen was expected to be a noble, beautiful, virtuous, and chaste
protector of her family. She knew that monarchy in both Castile and
England was based on a preference for rule by a king who was expected
to be masculine, tough-minded, and fully in charge of the military, diplo-
matic, legal, and legislative work of governing, and that the queen was
expected to bear children, serve as an adviser, and be a moderating influ-
ence on her husband’s masculinity. There is, however, one significant
difference between the two realms. There had been no reigning queen
in England since Matilda’s contested rule in the twelfth century, but
queens were tolerated as regents or as stand-ins for an ailing king or

15 Elston, “Transformation or Continuity?” 11–26; Aram, Juana the Mad, 23; Núria
Silleras Fernández, Chariots of Ladies: Francesc Eiximenis and the Court Culture of
Medieval and Early Modern Iberia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015).
16 Emily Francomano, ed. and trans., Three Spanish Querelle Texts: Grisel and Mirabella,
The Slander against Women, and The Defense of Ladies against Slanderers (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2013), 51.
17 Retha M. Warnicke, Elizabeth of York and Her Six Daughters-in-Law: Fashioning
Tudor Queenship, 1485–1547 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017); and Michelle L.
Beer, Queenship at the Renaissance Courts of Britain: Catherine of Aragon and Margaret
Tudor, 1503–1533 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2018).
24 T. EARENFIGHT

young prince.18 Castile, on the other hand, was governed from 1479 to
1504 by a sovereign queen, Catherine’s mother, who forged an unprece-
dented form of ruling with Fernando that placed significant limitations
on his powers in Castile.19 The mottos of her mother and mother-in-law
vividly express these different practices of queenship. Elizabeth of York’s
motto was “humble and reverent” whereas Isabel of Castile’s motto was
“tanto monta, monta tanto, Isabel como Fernando,” or “as much Isabel
as Fernando.”20 Catherine, as queen consort, expressed a different polit-
ical reality from her mother’s. Without the powerful tools of a realm
of her own, she chose “humble and loyal” for her motto. This was an
expression of humility before God and her husband, and loyalty to the
monarchy, and humility is the foundation for Catherine’s advice in her
counsel for Mary. Yet she knew that there could be another way, or at least
that kings and queens could work together. For example, the coronation
odes that commemorate Catherine’s marriage to Henry are illustrated
with an entwining of Henry’s Tudor Rose and Catherine’s pomegranate.
This complex symbolism suggests not only the dynastic marriage but also
the joining of a king and queen into a monarchical pair who shared the
work of governing.21
Catherine had an unwavering conviction that Mary could rule in her
own right, but she also knew that she might have to cede the work of
governance to her husband, so Richard Fetherstone, her tutor until 1525,
did not emphasize governmental instruction. By contrast, Henry FitzRoy,
her illegitimate half-brother (born to Elizbeth Blount), was two years
younger than Mary but was educated in the expectation that he would
govern something, even if just his landed estates.22 When Mary was
seven, Catherine invited humanist Juan Luis Vives to England to guide
the curriculum and hired Thomas Linacre and Giles Du West as Mary’s
tutors whose task was to prepare Mary to handle a range of possibilities.23

18 Charles Beem, The Lioness Roared: The Problems of Female Rule in English History
(New York: Palgrave, 2006), 25–62.
19 Barbara F. Weissberger, Isabel Rules: Constructing Queenship, Wielding Power
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), 28–68.
20 Warnicke, Elizabeth of York and Her Six Daughters-in-Law.
21 Unknown artist, illumination of Thomas More, “Coronation Ode,” 1509. British
Library, London, Cotton MS Titus D iv, fols. 2–14, image on fol. 12v.
22 Judith M. Richards, Mary Tudor (London: Routledge, 2008), 48.
23 Schutte, “‘To the Illustrious Queen,’” 24; Elston, “Transformation or Continuity?”.
 “BY YOUR LOVING MOTHER” … 25

Vives sought to balance ideas on women’s place in a household with more

open-minded ideas on educating women for life beyond domesticity. He
wavered on what that should be, however, as he advised her to be wary
of the company of men, to rely on others for advice, and to avoid public
life in any form. In 1524, he outlined a curriculum in De ratione studii
puerilis , advocating cultivation of eloquence and recommending that
Mary read more pragmatic texts such as Plato’s governmental writings,
Thomas More’s Utopia, and Erasmus’s Education of a Christian Prince.24
But he continued to believe that chastity and silence were best for females,
whose study should lead them to moral lives centered on the household,
not the court. In his preface to De Institutione Foeminae Christianae he
complimented Catherine as an example of erudition, noting that Mary
“shall read these instructions of mine, and follow in living. Which she
must needs do if she is to order herself after the example that hath at
home with her.”25 Catherine commissioned Desiderius Erasmus to write
a book on marriage, the Institution of Christian Marriage, for Mary.
Vives’s Satellitium sive Symbola, a collection of advice and moral maxims,
has a lengthy preface dedication to Mary as Princess of Wales, an echo of
Catherine’s title when she married Arthur and reinforcing Mary’s status
as heir to the throne.26
As de facto Princess of Wales Mary was a very desirable diplomatic asset
as potential bride for the infant French dauphin, François, in 1518.27
When the treaty to seal peace with France unraveled, her cousin, Charles,
fifteen years older and king of Castile and Aragon, began to look attrac-
tive as a marriage candidate.28 Catherine supported the match, and in
1520 Mary was introduced to Charles, then Holy Roman Emperor, on
his state visit to England just before the meeting of the royal families of

24 Vives personally gave a copy of the De ratione studii puerilis to Catherine on a

visit to Oxford. Elston, “Transformation or Contiuity?,” 11–26; and Pollnitz, Princely
Education, 106–138.
25 David Loades, Mary Tudor: A Life (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 31.
26 Cambridge University, Emmanuel College MSS 3.2.30, 1526. In 1526 a deluxe
presentation copy of the manuscript with a handwritten dedication was given to Catherine.
James P. Carley, The Books of King Henry VIII and his Wives (London: The British Library,
2005), 119.
27 Charles Beem, “Princess of Wales? Mary Tudor and the History of English Heirs to
the Throne,” in Sarah Duncan and Valerie Schutte, eds, The Birth of a Queen (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 13–30.
28 Richards, Mary Tudor, 31–44.
26 T. EARENFIGHT

England and France at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. In 1521, the Treaty
of Bruges set out the terms for a future marriage, and a six-week visit
in 1522 gave Charles a chance to get to know his six-year-old prospec-
tive bride.29 Mary’s betrothal to Charles was called off, however, when
the imperial army defeated the French at the Battle of Pavia and dramati-
cally upset diplomatic relations. Charles chose to marry Isabel of Portugal
and this affected Mary’s position at the head of the line of succession,
which led to a crisis in Catherine and Henry’s marriage. Angry at both
Charles and Catherine, Henry responded with an ominous move when he
knighted Henry FitzRoy and granted him the title of Duke of Richmond
and Somerset. Catherine objected loudly to this move, which put FitzRoy
too close in the line of succession for her comfort. Henry then sent nine-
year-old Mary, de facto Princess of Wales, to Ludlow Castle in the Welsh
marches to learn how to govern the Council of Wales.30 This separation
upset Catherine and prompted her to write to Mary in 1525, asking for
forgiveness for “any forgetfulness hath caused me to keep Charles [the
messenger] so long here, and answered not your good letter.”31 To Mary,
this would have read as an ordinary letter from a mother who is sad to
see her daughter grow up a bit, leave home, and strike out on her own.
Catherine seems lonely in a nest empty of her husband and daughter, and
she prods Mary gently about her studies, saying that it “shall be a great
comfort to me to see you keep your Latin and fair writing.” This letter is
filled with maternal affection, but Catherine skillfully uses her rhetorical
skill to subtly give Mary counsel and advice.
This is evident in her syntax, particularly her use of “ye,” the nomina-
tive form of “you.” Originally plural, it had become the formal alternative
to the informal “thou” (nominative “thee”). For example, she uses both
forms, as when she says, “And in the mean time I am very glad to hear
from you, especially when they show me that ye be well amended. I pray
God to continue it to his pleasure.” By the beginning of the sixteenth

29 Calendar of State Papers, Spain, Volume 4, Part 1, Henry VIII, 1529–1530, ed.
Pascual de Gayangos (London, 1879), 71.
30 Jeri McIntosh, “A Culture of Reverence: Princess Mary’s Household, 1525–27,” in
Tudor Queenship: The Reigns of Mary and Elizabeth, ed. Alice Hunt and Anna Whitelock
(New York: Palgrave, 2010), 113–126.
31 Transcription in Henry Ellis, ed., Original Letters, illustrative of English history, 11
vols. (London: Dawsons, 1969), letter 107, 19–20; original letter in London, British
Library, MS Cotton Vespasian F, XIII, fol. 72.
 “BY YOUR LOVING MOTHER” … 27

century, “thou” began to be seen as insulting and demeaning, except

when used between people who were familiar with each other. It was still
commonly used in addressing children, and it is interesting that Catherine
does not do that with her daughter. Her use of “ye” is a sign that her rela-
tionship with Mary was both familiar and formal.32 Her close watchful
eye on Mary’s Latin, and her pride in her daughter’s intellect, are clear
when she says that she is “glad that ye shall change from me to Master
Federston.” This is part of a social script of a mother to a child newly
parted. She is glad that Mary has a new tutor so she will not lose her
Latin skills but may well have been less “glad” that she was not able to
keep her eye on Mary’s progress with Latin. She encourages Mary to take
her Latin a step further when she speaks of Mary’s “own enditing,” that
is, “inditing,” composing or writing literature. This tells us that Mary
could do more than just read Latin. She could compose in Latin. She was
only nine, so it may not have been profound or eloquent, but this is a
veiled hint that she used that Latin to write home, a sentiment familiar to
parents who want to stay close to their child.
It is, however, more than a maternal desire to stay in touch with her
daughter. Catherine pushed Mary to be skilled enough to translate Latin
into English, as she would later do with Erasmus’s Paraphrase on St. John’s
Gospel, published in 1547.33 She encouraged Mary to go even further, to
be as fluent in Latin as the men who would surround her at court so that
she could listen closely to every conversation and read every word of every
letter, a skill which would allow her to govern as an intellectual equal to
kings and popes. Catherine is content knowing that Mary is in good hands
with both Fetherston and her close friend, Margaret Pole, the countess
of Salisbury, and closes as “your loving mother.” Catherine’s words are
more than formulaic flourishes. What she left out in her letter to Mary in
1525 is significant, however. Her physical health may have been “meetly
good,” but she was very troubled emotionally by the state of her personal
relations with Henry. His actions regarding Henry FitzRoy were ominous

32 Thanks to María Bullon-Fernández for their expertise Middle English. See Joseph
M. Williams, “‘O! When Degree is Shak’d’: Sixteenth-Century Anticipations of Some
Modern Attitudes Toward Usage,” in English in Its Social Contexts: Essays in Historical
Sociolinguistics, ed. Tim William Machan and Charles T. Scott (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1992), 90–94.
33 Foster Watson, ed. Vives and the Renascence Education of Women (New York:
Longmans, Green, 1912), p.148.
28 T. EARENFIGHT

enough, but by sometime in the mid-1520s, his eye had begun to wander
toward one of Catherine’s ladies at court, Anne Boleyn.34
Personal, dynastic, and diplomatic matters complicated the next years
for Mary. Relations with Charles V and François worsened, and in January
1528 Henry declared war against Charles, which inflamed tensions with
Catherine even more. But more important to Mary was Henry’s anxiety
over the fate of the Tudor dynasty. The possibility that a legitimate
daughter could take precedence over an illegitimate son prompted him
to pursue lengthy and politically divisive legal proceedings. This, in turn,
intensified the anxiety for both mother and daughter.35 In 1529 at the
papal legate’s court at Blackfriars, Catherine dramatically defended the
validity of her marriage and denounced the legal authority of the English
court to dissolve her marriage that would call into question Mary’s
status as Princess and heir. The marriage was truly finished in January
1533 when Henry privately married Anne Boleyn, then pregnant. On
June 1, 1533 Anne was crowned, their daughter Elizabeth was born on
September 7, and Mary was demoted to Lady Mary. In December 1533,
Henry dissolved Mary’s household, dismissed her servants (including
Margaret Pole), and sent her to Hatfield in Herefordshire to serve in the
household of her half-sister. Events in late winter and spring of 1534 put
Mary in a precarious position.36 Catherine lost control of her estates as
queen in March.37 Popular support for Catherine, resistance to Henry’s
actions against Rome, and dislike of Anne Boleyn resulted in scattered
risings in Lancashire, unrest in London, and the dangerous prophecies
and visions of Elizabeth Barton (“the maid of Kent”). Contradictory legal
decisions further complicated matters. Pope Clement VII judged in favor
of Catherine on March 24, but his ruling was moot because it came one

34 There is lively scholarly debate about when Henry began his relationship with Anne.
Retha Warnicke argues that began in the early 1520s, see The Rise and Fall of Anne
Boleyn: Family Politics at the Court of Henry VIII (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1989). But her interpretation is challenged by G. W. Bernard, Anne Boleyn: Fatal
Attractions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 19–36; and Eric Ives, The Life
and Death of Anne Boleyn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 85–91, who argue
for a later date.
35 Mattingly, Catherine of Aragon, 263–294.
36 Warnicke, Elizabeth of York and Her Six Daughters-in-Law, 100; Loades, Mary
Tudor, 72; Mattingly, Catherine of Aragon, 363–65, 374–375.
37 Michelle L. Beer, “A Queenly Affinity? Catherine of Aragon’s Estates and Henry
VIII’s Great Matter,” Historical Research 1, no. 253 (2018): 426–445.
 “BY YOUR LOVING MOTHER” … 29

day after Parliament had passed the First Act of Succession that invalidated
Henry and Catherine’s marriage, with no right to appeal the decision.38
This havoc put Mary in a truly untenable position. She was declared
illegitimate but not explicitly excluded from the succession. Catherine,
no longer queen, was sent to live in the hinterlands. She resisted pleas
to give up and enter a nunnery or to fight back and call on her subjects
to defend her. This brutal reality is the background for the letter that
Catherine wrote in early 1534 to Mary, who had just celebrated her eigh-
teenth birthday.39 The letter may be a reply to a letter from Mary to
Catherine, now lost. It is not dated, but judging from the substance of
the letter, it is likely that she wrote it in late April, sometime around May
1, the deadline for all the king’s subjects regardless of rank or condition
to formally accept the Act, but no later than mid-May, when Catherine’s
court was moved from Buckden to Kimbolton.40
Catherine does not waste any time. There are no pleasantries about
her health. She begins the letter with a report of news that she heard,
perhaps from the ambassadors at court or a trusted friend: “Daughter, I
heard such tidings today that I do perceive if it be true, the time is come
that Almighty God will prove you; and I am very glad of it, for I trust He
doth handle you with a good love.” The “He” clearly refers not to Henry
but to God. Catherine trusts God to handle her with “a good love” to
continue to protect Mary. She does not explicitly say what the “tidings”
were, but she likely meant the news of Pope Clement’s decision and the
First Act of Succession, which would indeed test Mary’s strength and will.
What comes next in the letter is less clear, however, and this touches on
the heart of the dilemma that Mary faced: To whom does she owe her
obedience? God? Or Henry?
The dilemma centers on ambiguity in the pronouns. In the second
sentence, for example, Catherine says, “I beseech you agree to His plea-
sure with a merry heart; and be you sure that, without fail, he will

38 25 H 8, c 22 in Statutes of the Realm, 11 vols. (London: Dawson’s, 1810–1828),

vol. 3, 471–474.
39 Transcription in Gilbert Burnet, ed., The History of the Reformation of the Church of
England, ed. Nicholas Pocock, 7 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1865), vol. 5, 363–364;
manuscript in British Library (London) Arundel MS 151, fol. 194.
40 Mattingly argues that it was sent in April 1534, after the Act of Supremacy, but
Loades thinks it was sent much earlier, when her household was diminished. Mattingly,
Catherine of Aragon, 406–408; Loades, Mary Tudor, 77–79.
30 T. EARENFIGHT

not suffer you to perish if you beware to offend Him.” Who precisely
is “Him”? “His pleasure” seems to refer to God’s will, which is the
subject of the prior sentence. But given the “tidings,” “His pleasure”
could also refer to Henry’s delight with the First Act of Succession which
he wanted Mary to accept. If she takes care not to offend Henry, she
will be safe from his anger and will not perish. She then advises Mary to
offer herself to “Him.” Is this Henry, who had moved to place himself as
the head of the Church in England? If so, that would go against Mary’s
loyalty to Rome. If it is God, that places her in peril with her father.
Catherine advised Mary that “[i]f any pangs come to you, shrive your-
self; first make you clean” and then “take heed of His commandments,
and keep them as near as He will give you grace to do, for then you are
sure armed.” The letter is so carefully written that the ambiguity seems
intentional, however, a deliberate use of pronouns to mask her critique of
Henry’s actions against papal authority. Read as a statement of theology,
“pangs” can mean mental anguish or thoughts of sin, specifically defiance
of papal authority which should be resolved with confession and absolu-
tion (“shrive yourself”) so that “He will give you grace to do” and “take
heed of His commandments” to arm herself. Read as advice to follow
the dicta of the pope rather than her father, Catherine knew that this
advice bordered on treason. By then, the executions of Thomas More
and John Fisher made it clear that Henry would not tolerate resistance of
any sort. If, however, the capitalization of the pronouns signifies the royal
honorific, then the masculine “He” and “His” would be Henry. Read this
way, she is advising Mary that the best course of action is to obey Henry,
even though it goes against her conscience, and then perform confession,
safe in the knowledge that God loves her and will protect her.
This is very subtle phrasing from an erudite woman who knew the
risks of the familial and political terrain. Catherine knew that there were
spies in her court and her letters were intercepted when she notes unam-
biguously, “[a]nd if this lady [Anne Shelton] do come to you, as it is
spoken, if she do bring you a letter from the King, I am sure in the self-
same letter you shall be commanded what you shall do.” Catherine had
heard gossip that Shelton was the trusty courier bearing the command
from Henry. Catherine trusted that Mary could read between the lines
and understood the ambiguity in her choice of pronouns. This sort of
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Title: Prinzessin Sidonie (Band 1/3)

Author: Julius Bacher

Release date: November 1, 2023 [eBook #71998]

Language: German

Original publication: Leipzig: Verlag von Friedrich Fleischer, 1870

Credits: Hans Theyer and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

at https://www.pgdp.net (This transcription was produced
from images generously made available by Bayerische
Staatsbibliothek / Bavarian State Library.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRINZESSIN

SIDONIE (BAND 1/3) ***
 Anmerkungen zur Transkription
Der vorliegende Text wurde in Fraktur gesetzt; offensichtliche Druckfehler sind
stillschweigend korrigiert worden. Ungewöhnliche und heute nicht mehr
gebräuchliche Schreibweisen wurden übernommen.
Worte in Antiquaschrift sind "kursiv" dargestellt.
Das Umschlagbild wurde vom Bearbeiter geschaffen. Ein Urheberrecht wird
nicht geltend gemacht. Das Bild darf von jedermann unbeschränkt genutzt
werden.
Prinzessin Sidonie.

Roman
von

Julius Bacher.

Erster Band.

Leipzig,

Verlag von Friedrich Fleischer.

1870.
 Erstes Kapitel.

Der nachfolgenden Erzählung liegen geschichtliche Thatsachen

zu Grunde; da dieselben jedoch der neueren Zeit angehören und
aus anderen Ursachen haben wir es uns versagen müssen, das Bild
der unglücklichen Prinzessin in einen historischen Rahmen zu
fassen, überzeugt, daß es dem in die Geschichte der Höfe
eingeweihten Leser leicht sein dürfte, die Vorbilder zu den in dem
Roman gezeichneten Charakteren zu erkennen.

Es war etwa fünf Uhr Morgens. In dem Palais des Prinzen Albert
herrschte, wie gewöhnlich um eine so frühe Zeit, lautlose Stille. Vor
acht oder neun Uhr pflegte sich daselbst selten das Tagewerk
geltend zu machen, besonders wenn der Prinz in seinem Palais
anwesend war; er huldigte der Morgenruhe, da ihm das Nachtleben
zusagte.
Anders war es mit seiner Gemahlin, der Prinzessin Sidonie; sie
war eine Freundin des frischen Frühmorgens und seiner
Sabbathstille, und liebte es, sich, ohne mehr als ihre Kammerfrau zu
beanspruchen, allein oder in Gesellschaft der ihr befreundeten
Hofdame, Aurelie von Ketten, des ersteren zu erfreuen. Gewöhnlich
machte sie alsdann einen Gang durch den an das Schloß
grenzenden Park, oder dehnte den erstern wol auch bis in den
nahen, von lustigen Vogelstimmen durchtönten würzigen Wald aus,
dessen ungekünstelte Naturschönheit sie ganz besonders liebte.
 In einem kleinen Gemach des Palais befand sich an diesem
Morgen eine Dame von ungefähr dreiundzwanzig Jahren; sie saß an
dem geöffneten Fenster und schaute, den schön geformten Kopf in
die Hand gestützt, gedankenvoll in den sich vor ihr ausbreitenden
Garten und Park. Diese Dame war die Prinzessin Sidonie.
Ueber die Wipfel der von der Kunstscheere unberührt gebliebenen
hohen Bäume stieg die Sonne empor und warf ihre blitzenden
Lichter durch die Alleen und Gebüsche, vergoldete die hin und her
aufgestellten Marmorstatuen und die aufschießenden Strahlen der
Wasserkünste, welche in der Nähe des Palais sprudelten und eine
verkleinerte Nachbildung der in Versailles befindlichen zeigten.
In der Ferne tönten vereinzelte Vogelstimmen, die allein die
Morgenstille in dem einsamen Garten unterbrachen. Niemand vom
Hofe noch irgend ein Arbeiter war daselbst zu entdecken.
Schweigend und gedankenvoll hatte die Prinzessin eine kurze Zeit
hingebracht, als sich aus ihren tiefblauen Augen Thräne auf Thräne
drängte, die langsam über die bleichen Wangen hinabrollten, ohne
daß sie es zu fühlen schien, während sich zugleich der Ausdruck
tiefen Seelenleidens in ihrem schönen, jugendlichen Antlitz geltend
machte. Dieses Leid schien alle ihre Empfindungen und Gedanken
gefesselt zu haben, so daß sie die goldene Herrlichkeit des Morgens
nicht gewahrte. O, wie tief, wie unendlich tief mußte sie leiden, da ihr
die Natur kein Interesse abzugewinnen vermochte, die mit einer
Ueberfülle von Reizen ausgestattete Natur, die sie so sehr liebte! —
Wie rührend war ihr feines, bleiches Antlitz anzuschauen, das, mit
Jugendschönheit geschmückt, die Spuren eines langen,
schmerzlichen Kummers trug, der so früh über sie hereingebrochen
war und die reizende Frühlingsblume mit seinem winterlichen Reif
berührt hatte.
Die in dem Palais herrschende Stille wurde durch keinen Laut
unterbrochen; auch befand sich außer Sidonien Niemand in dem
Gemach, so daß sie durch nichts in der Hingabe an ihr Leid gestört
wurde.
Länger denn eine halbe Stunde mochte sie also hingebracht
haben, als sie das feine Spitzentuch gegen die feuchten Augen
drückte und alsdann voll der tiefsten Innigkeit ein Medaillon
betrachtete, das sie so lange in der Hand verborgen gehalten hatte.
Sie versenkte sich in dessen Anblick und bedeckte es mit Küssen,
nachdem sie sich vergewissert hatte, nicht belauscht zu sein. Eine
feine Röthe färbte dabei ihre blasse Wange, das Auge erhielt einen
matten Glanz, und den feinen, lieblichen Mund umspielte ein süßes
Lächeln, ein Lächeln, wie innige Liebe lächelt in stillem Glück und
dem Angedenken des mit der ganzen Seele umfaßten Geliebten. O,
wer sie hätte erlauschen können diese nur von der Seele
gesprochenen Dichtungen innigster Liebe! Wie süß, wie köstlich
mußten sie sein! Aber das Leid in ihrer Brust schien größer als das
Glück der Erinnerung zu sein, denn in die dem Medaillon
geschenkten Küsse drängte sich bald und immer rascher und heißer
die Thräne; schon versiegt, entquoll sie auf’s Neue dem Auge.
Ein Geräusch in dem Nebengemach schreckte sie auf; rasch glitt
das Medaillon in den Busen. Scheu und argwöhnisch blickte sie auf;
hastig fuhr sie mit dem Tuch über Augen und Antlitz, lauschte einige
Augenblicke, erhob sich alsdann und lehnte sich aus dem Fenster,
um an der Morgenluft die gerötheten Augen zu erfrischen und die
verrätherischen Spuren des Weinens zu verbergen.
In solcher Weise hatte sie eine kurze Zeit hingebracht, ohne daß
jedoch irgend Jemand erschien; dadurch beruhigt, gab sie sich
wieder ihrem Nachdenken hin, ohne daß sie jedoch das Medaillon
auf’s Neue zu betrachten wagte, obwol die Hand mehrmals darnach
langte und im Begriff war, dasselbe hervorzuziehen.
Sie bezwang jedoch ihr Verlangen, wahrscheinlich durch
besondere Umstände dazu veranlaßt; doch ließ sie die Hand auf
dem Busen ruhen, um sich in solcher Weise wenigstens der
Gegenwart des Bildes zu erfreuen. Ihre Vorsicht zeigte sich bald als
durchaus begründet; denn unhörbar und von ihr unbemerkt trat,
einen Seidenshawl in der Hand, eine bereits bejahrte Frau ein, nahte
ihr und bemerkte:
»Wollten Hoheit sich nicht des Shawls bedienen? Die Morgenluft
ist feucht und kühl, und Hoheit sind so leicht gekleidet und haben
sich meiner beim Ankleiden wieder nicht bedient.«
 »Warum sollte ich Dich stören, liebe Marion? Ein Morgenkleid ist
bald angethan auch ohne Hilfe, und — Du kennst mich darin,«
entgegnete Sidonie in herzlichem Ton, indem sie sich den Shawl
umlegen ließ.
»Ich weiß nur zu gut, wie gnädig Eure Hoheit gegen Jedermann,
zumal gegen mich, sind; aber ich bitte, schonen Sie mich nicht,
wenn es gilt, Hoheit vor Schaden zu bewahren.«
»Gut, gut, Marion. Mache Dir keine übeln Gedanken. Es schadet
mir weder Wind noch Wetter; ich habe meinen Körper, wie Du weißt,
in der Kindheit nicht verweichlicht, und daher erträgt er wol leicht ein
wenig frische Luft, die mir heute ganz besonders zusagt.«
»Eben heute, Hoheit, dürfen Sie am wenigsten unpaß werden,
heute, wo Sie so Viele zu empfangen haben und sich nicht wenig
anstrengen müssen.«
»Fürchte nichts, liebe Marion. Ich werde gesund und kräftig sein
und das Meinige thun. Und der Tag wird rasch vergehen, vergehen
— wie alle anderen.«
Theilnehmend, doch schweigend schaute Marion zu ihrer Herrin
auf; sie hatte ihre geliebte Prinzessin seit deren Jugend gehütet,
hatte sie zur Jungfrau erblühen sehen und sie immer bedient. Mit
fast mütterlicher Liebe hing sie an ihr, deren Güte und Freundlichkeit
sie stets genossen, und so war sie hocherfreut, als sie dieselbe an
den fremden Hof begleiten und in deren Diensten bleiben durfte.
»Ist Fräulein von Ketten schon auf?« fragte Sidonie nach kurzem
Schweigen.
»Ich vermuthe; wenigstens bemerkte ich, daß das Fenster ihres
Schlafzimmers geöffnet ist, ein Zeichen, daß das Fräulein das Bett
verlassen hat.«
»So wird es sein; denn Aurelie weiß, daß ich sie heute früher als
gewöhnlich erwarte.«
»Da ist das Fräulein schon!« fiel Marion in diesem Augenblick
erfreut ein, als sich die Außenthür öffnete und die genannte Dame
eintrat.
 »So komme ich also doch schon zu spät!« rief diese, indem sie,
sich nahend, hinzufügte: »Es war meine Absicht, Hoheit in diesem
Zimmer zu überraschen, und nun erkenne ich bedauernd, daß ich
doch nicht früh genug aufgestanden bin. Hoheit sind mir in dieser
Beziehung zuvor gekommen.«
»Ihr Besuch, liebste Ketten, ist mir darum nicht minder angenehm
und ich danke Ihnen herzlich dafür,« entgegnete Sidonie mit
sichtlicher Bewegung, streckte dem Fräulein die Hände entgegen
und zog, als sich in diesem Augenblick die Thür hinter der sich
entfernenden Marion geschlossen hatte, Aurelie heftig und mit
ausbrechenden Thränen in die Arme. Innig und fest drückte diese
die Prinzessin an die Brust, und obgleich Aurelie bemüht war,
Fassung und Ruhe zu bewahren, füllten sich auch ihre Augen mit
Thränen.
Schweigend hielten sich die beiden Frauen einige Augenblicke
umschlungen; alsdann erhob Aurelie das Haupt und blickte die
Prinzessin voll und innig an, indem sie mit gedämpfter Stimme
bemerkte:
»Verlange an dem heutigen Tage kein Wort von mir. Segne Dich
der Ewige mit Geduld, Muth und Kraft, und möge er bald, bald Dein
Leid enden!«
Mit diesen Worten schloß sie die Prinzessin auf’s Neue in die
Arme.
»Ich danke Dir, Aurelie, ich danke Dir aus vollem, innigem Herzen
für Deine Liebe und Freundschaft, die mein Trost und meine Stütze
in meinem Kummer sind. Wie hätte ich ohne sie die mir
aufgebürdete Last ertragen, alles das entbehren können, was das
Glück meines Lebens ausmacht?! O, bewahre mir Deine Liebe,
ohne sie könnte ich nicht leben! Verlaß mich nicht, meine Aurelie!«
»Wie könnte ich Dich verlassen, verlassen in Deinem Leid?
Fürchte das nicht; denn ich will bei Dir ausharren alle Zeit und so
lange es Dir gefällt!« fiel Aurelie in dem herzlichsten Ton ein.
»O Du Gute, wie soll ich Dir für Deine seltene Hingabe danken!
Doch Du kennst ja die Empfindungen meines Herzens, wozu also
der Versicherungen!« entgegnete Sidonie. »Ich kenne sie, meine
theure Sidonie, und weiß nur zu wohl, wie innig unsere Herzen
verkettet sind,« bemerkte Aurelie und fuhr alsdann fort: »O, ich
würde ganz glücklich sein, wollte der Himmel auch endlich Deinem
Herzen Frieden und Glück verleihen!«
Die Prinzessin schüttelte traurig das Haupt und entgegnete
seufzend:
»Du weißt, ich habe jede Hoffnung darauf begraben; laß’ uns
darum nicht mehr des Unmöglichen gedenken, es kann unsern
Kummer nur vermehren. Ich will mein Leid so lange tragen, als ich
es vermag, des Weiteren mag Gott walten! Hilf- und machtlos, wie
ich dastehe, kann er nur helfen.«
Stumm drückten sich die Freundinnen die Hände.
Nach kurzer Pause fragte Sidonie:
»Ist der Prinz gestern nach Hause gekommen?«
Aurelie verneinte, und sichtlich erfreut fuhr die Prinzessin fort:
»Das ist gut, so werde ich ihn wahrscheinlich erst beim Empfang
sehen und er wird mich in dem Genuß des schönen Morgens nicht
stören. O könnte ich,« fuhr sie in tiefer Bewegung fort, »könnte ich
mit der eiligen Schwalbe dahinziehen weit, weit über die Wälder und
Berge fort in die Ferne zu anderen Menschen und Gegenden und
dort in der Stille mein armes Leben ausleben! Sieh,« bemerkte sie
nach einer kleinen Pause und deutete auf das Gesims draußen,
»sieh, wie der Vogel dort sein Nest anklebt, ohne zu ahnen, welche
Stätte er sich zu seinem Liebesleben gewählt, ohne zu ahnen, daß,
während er in der Liebe und Sorge für die Seinen aufgeht, in den
Mauern dieser Stätte Liebesglück und Menschenwürde mit Füßen
getreten werden und die Selbstsucht allein das Scepter führt. Welch
eine Erniedrigung der menschlichen Natur, von einem thierischen
Geschöpf übertroffen zu werden! O, suche Keiner das Lebensglück
dort, wo die Sorge ihren Fuß scheu von dem goldenen Prunk
wendet, wo der Macht die Erfüllung der Wünsche gleich einer
Sklavin folgt, um sie zu Lieblosigkeit und Ungerechtigkeit zu führen;
wo die Ueberfülle den Ueberdruß zeugt und die edleren Gefühle des
Menschen in dem Sumpf ekler Gemeinheit ertränkt! O, daß ich in
diesen Kreis schnöder Selbstsucht, niederer Sittenlosigkeit gebannt
wurde und sich der Himmel nicht meiner erbarmte und mir zugleich
auch das Gefühl für das Bessere und Gute in der Seele zerstörte,
um mit diesen Creaturen einzustimmen in den Hymnus ihres
zügellosen Treibens! Aber sie sollen mich nicht herabziehen zu sich;
ich habe gekämpft, und kämpfen will ich, um mich zu behaupten, so
lange mir noch Kraft bleibt und Odem meine Brust belebt!«
Die Prinzessin hatte mit sich rasch steigernder Aufregung
gesprochen, die so groß war, daß sich ihr Antlitz röthete, ihr Auge
glänzte und ihre schlanke, hohe Gestalt voll Bewegung erschien.
Von der Heftigkeit ihrer schmerzlichen Empfindungen fortgerissen,
vergaß sie sogar die nöthige Vorsicht, mit gedämpfter Stimme zu
sprechen, um nicht von unberufenen Ohren belauscht zu werden,
und die nicht minder tief ergriffene Freundin vergaß es ebenso in
ihrem innigen Mitleiden, sie auf den letzteren Umstand aufmerksam
zu machen. Fast bedurfte es dessen jedoch kaum. Nur die treue
Marion befand sich in der Nähe und konnte die nur zu gerechten
Ausbrüche des Schmerzes und Unmuthes vernehmen, die sie nicht
überraschten. Sie kannte das Unglück ihrer geliebten Prinzessin nur
zu wohl, wie auch die Welt, die Sidonie mit warmem Herzen
bemitleidete und den Prinzen verdammte, dessen Verhalten und
wildes Treiben alles Unheil herbeigeführt hatte.
Was sich hier in der Familie eines Fürsten enthüllte, wiederholte
sich in mancher geringeren Familie und forderte auch das
geduldigste und anspruchsloseste Herz heraus. Es waren die
natürlichsten und einfachsten Beziehungen zwischen Mann und
Weib, und darum hielt sich ein Jeder zu der Theilnahme an diesen
Vorgängen berechtigt, so Hoch als Niedrig, denn in den rein
menschlichen Interessen vereinen sich nur zu leicht alle Stimmen.
Uebersah Fräulein von Ketten in ihrem Mitleiden mit der Prinzessin
auch die näher bezeichnete Vorsicht, so fühlte dagegen ihr treues,
warmes Herz die Pflicht, die fürstliche Freundin zu trösten, vor Allem
zu beruhigen, um sie für einen leicht möglichen Besuch des Prinzen,
der wegen des heutigen Geburtstages der Prinzessin zu erwarten
war, in die erforderliche Stimmung zu versetzen.
 Aurelie kannte ihren Einfluß auf Sidonie, und darum schloß sie
diese in die Arme und entgegnete mit bittender Stimme:
»Vergiß, vergiß, meine geliebte, theure Freundin, vergiß
wenigstens für einige Stunden, was Dein armes Herz so tief bewegt!
Der Prinz könnte leicht früher eintreffen, als wir vermuthen, Du
besäßest alsdann nicht diejenige Ruhe, die ein Zusammentreffen mit
ihm erfordert. Deine Seele ist so sehr erregt und würde nach einem
Ausdruck ihrer Empfindungen verlangen, und die Folge davon wäre
ein ähnliches übles Benehmen des Prinzen gegen Dich, wie Du es
leider schon oft erfahren mußtest. Du kennst seinen Jähzorn
namentlich in Momenten, in welchen er als Schuldiger vor Dir steht
und ihn die Nöthigung peinigt, ein versöhnendes Wort vor Dir
auszusprechen. Ein Vorwurf von Dir, so gerecht derselbe auch
immerhin wäre, könnte daher leicht eine Unterredung zwischen Euch
herbeiführen, die Dich zu dem gewöhnlichen Empfang des Fürsten
und der übrigen Hof- und Staatspersonen unfähig macht. Dadurch
würde der Fürst unangenehm berührt werden, Du weißt es, und die
Welt fände darin überdies willkommenen Stoff, sich in Betrachtungen
über Dein eheliches Zerwürfniß zu ergehen. Darum bemühe Dich zu
vergessen, und ich hoffe, es wird Dir gelingen. Ich habe ein
geeignetes Mittel dazu in der Nähe und Du wirst mir gestatten, es zu
Dir zu führen.« — —
»Ja, ja, meine gute Aurelie, Dein treues Herz weiß, was mir dient.
Geh’, geh’ und bringe mir meinen einzigen Trost, meine einzige
Freude!« fiel die Prinzessin beruhigter, wenngleich noch im
schmerzlichen Ton ein.
Aurelie beeilte sich, ihren Wunsch zu erfüllen, begab sich in eins
der Nebengemächer und kehrte sehr bald mit einem lieblichen
Mädchen von ungefähr zwei Jahren, dem treuen Ebenbilde der
Prinzessin und deren Tochter, zurück und legte es in Sidoniens
Arme. Diese herzte und küßte das Kind unter hervorbrechenden
Thränen, während das Letztere ein paar französische Worte lallte,
die Aurelie seinem Gedächtniß eingeprägt hatte und deren
Bedeutung lautete: »Gott segne Mama!«
 Aurelie hatte, wie sie zu ihrer Freude erkannte, das geeignetste
Mittel zur Beruhigung ihrer fürstlichen Freundin erwählt, denn indem
sich Sidonie mit ihrer Tochter beschäftigte, erheiterte sich ihr Antlitz,
und die Freude an dem Antlitz ihres lieblichen Kindes verdrängte
allmälig die Bitterkeit aus ihrem Herzen.
In dem Anschauen des Letzteren verloren, bemerkte sie mit
freudiger Stimme:
»O, wie beglückt es mich, daß Isabella nur m i r gleicht und keinen
s e i n e r Züge trägt! Sieh nur, Aurelie, die Farbe und der Schnitt der
Augen, die blonden Haare und der ganze Ausdruck des
Gesichtchens, sind sie mir nicht abgestohlen?«
»Gewiß, gewiß, und je mehr sich Isabella entwickelt, um so
lebhafter tritt diese Aehnlichkeit hervor,« beeilte sich Aurelie zu
entgegnen, über Sidoniens ruhigere und angenehmere Stimmung
erfreut. Die Prinzessin veranlaßte ihre Tochter, den Glückwunsch
noch einigemal zu wiederholen, was auch mit ihrer und Aureliens
Nachhilfe so ziemlich gelang und deren innige Freude erzeugte.
Isabella, dadurch angeregt, wurde lebhafter und begann mit der
Prinzessin nach Kinderart zu tändeln, wobei es geschah, daß sie
das Händchen in dem mütterlichen Busen barg und dabei das
Medaillon entdeckte, das sie plötzlich hervorzog.
»Was thust Du?!« rief Sidonie erschreckt und beeilte sich, dem
Kinde das Bild zu entziehen; ehe ihr dies jedoch gelang, ließ Isabella
das Medaillon fallen, und Aurelie fing es auf und behielt es in der
Hand. In diesem Augenblick trat die Wärterin des Kindes ein und
näherte sich der Prinzessin, worauf Sidonie, nachdem sie Isabella
geküßt, diese der Ersteren mit dem Bedeuten übergab, die Kleine in
den Garten zu führen. Dies geschah, und die Frauen blieben allein.
Ein Blick hatte Aurelie genügt, das in dem Medaillon enthaltene
männliche Portrait zu erkennen und sie in Folge dessen bestürzt
gemacht; dennoch wußte sie ihre Bewegung der Wärterin zu
verbergen; als sich diese entfernt hatte, bemerkte sie mit erregtem
Ton:
»Welche Unvorsichtigkeit!«
 »Zürne mir nicht, Aurelie, und bedenke, wie sehr sich mein Herz
an dem heutigen Morgen nach dem Anblick des theuern, geliebten
Freundes sehnte,« fiel Sidonie in leisem, bittenden Ton ein. »Wie
könnte ich Dir zürnen, ich, die Dich über Alles liebt?! Doch ich
beschwöre Dich, sei vorsichtig und bedenke, welche üble Folgen die
Entdeckung dieses Bildes bei Dir nach sich ziehen kann! Zwar ist
dem Prinzen Deine Liebe zu dem Jugendfreunde, sowie dieser
selbst unbekannt, auch zeigte Albert bisher keine Eifersucht;
dennoch können Umstände eintreten, die ihn mit dem Original
dieses Portraits bekannt machen, und der verrathene Besitz des
letzteren müßte alsdann zu gefährlichen Mißdeutungen
Veranlassung geben!« —
»Ich will Dir nicht widersprechen, liebe Aurelie, da Deine
Vorstellung viel Wahres enthält, das unter anderen Verhältnissen in
der That die von Dir bezeichnete Bedeutung und Gefahr für mich mit
sich führen könnte. Ich sage, unter anderen Verhältnissen; denn bei
des Prinzen Abneigung und Gleichgiltigkeit gegen mich dürfte
demselben eine solche Entdeckung kaum von irgend welchem
Interesse sein.« —
»Man sollte dies voraussetzen, und dennoch werden wir oft durch
die Entdeckung überrascht, daß dies nicht nur nicht der Fall ist,
sondern die Selbstsucht und verletzte Eitelkeit eines solchen
Mannes dadurch zur heftigsten Eifersucht herausgefordert werden,
obgleich er durch die Lieblosigkeit und Vernachlässigung seiner
Gattin sich ein jedes Anrecht auf ihre Liebe verscherzte. Dies,
fürchte ich, dürfte auch bei dem eigenwilligen und heftigen Charakter
des Prinzen zu erwarten sein, und so rathe ich, Du überlässest mir
das Portrait, um einem solchen möglichen Fall vorzubeugen. Der
Graf ist ja auch m e i n Freund, und der Besitz seines Portraits darf
m i r nicht verargt werden. Ich kann es Dir in jedem Augenblick
einhändigen, theure Sidonie, und der Werth desselben dürfte sich für
Dich nicht verringern, weil es die Hand der Freundschaft bewahrt
und Du es aus dieser empfängst.« —
»Gewiß, gewiß, meine Gute, so ist es, und dennoch — —
dennoch trenne ich mich so schwer von ihm. Du wirst mich
verstehen. Unsere Empfindungen stimmen ja innig überein, und so
bedarf es der Erinnerung nicht, daß der Liebe selbst eine
wohlgemeinte Vermittlung der Freundschaft wie eine Verringerung
ihres stillen Glücks erscheint,« fiel Sidonie ein.
»Ich gebe Dir Recht; doch erwäge, daß Deine Verhältnisse ein
solches Opfer erfordern.« —
»Und warum? Der Prinz kümmert sich nicht um mich; meine
Verwandten ebenso; warum sollte daher irgend welche Gefahr für
mich in dem Besitz des Medaillons liegen, nach welchem Niemand
forschen wird und kann, da man, bis auf meinen Bruder, keine
Ahnung von dem tiefen Interesse hat, das mich an Bernhard
fesselt?« —
»Und dennoch rathe ich Dir dazu, ja ich bitte Dich, Sidonie, laß mir
das Bild!«
»Wie sehr Du mich drängst!« fiel Sidonie mit Befremden ein. »Wie
Du mich drängst, mich von dem theuern Bilde zu trennen, das mir in
meinen finsteren Stunden Trost und das Hoffen auf ein glücklicheres
Leben in die Seele lächelt, das mir, wenn ich in meinem Leid
verzweifeln will, ermuthigend zuruft: nicht zu verzagen und zu
bedenken, daß mir sein Herz in treuer, unwandelbarer Liebe schlägt,
das nahe und fern mit mir leidet und lebt, und vielleicht mehr als ich
leidet, mich als die Gemahlin eines ungeliebten Mannes zu wissen.
Siehst Du, Aurelie, so spricht dies Bild zu mir, und so spreche ich zu
ihm, wenn meine beunruhigte, gepeinigte Seele sich zu ihm flüchtet,
und ich werde muthiger, ruhiger, und sein Anblick zaubert mir die
schöne Vergangenheit der Jugend zurück, und ich plaudere mit ihm
über sie und über uns, und alle Ereignisse, geringe und
bedeutsame, ziehen an mir vorüber und lassen mich das Leid der
Gegenwart wenigstens für kurze Zeit vergessen. Und Du willst mir
diesen Trost nehmen, willst mich des einzigen Mittels berauben, mir
das Leben erträglich zu machen, wenn sich meine Seele in dem
Bewußtsein eines verfehlten, unheilvollen Lebens krümmt, und sich
meine Jugend, mein sittliches Gefühl und die Ehre des tief verletzten
Weibes gegen die aufgebürdete, entnervende Last empört und sie
mit der ganzen Gewalt des pulsenden Lebens von sich abzuwälzen
bestrebt ist?«
 »In meiner reinen, verzichtenden Liebe finde ich meine Religion,
die mein Herz veredelt und ihm durch diese Veredlung Trost und
Muth verleiht. Darum, Freundin, laß mir das Bild, ich verspreche Dir,
vorsichtiger zu sein und mich dessen nur in der sichersten
Einsamkeit zu erfreuen.« Sidonie hatte mit so vieler Wärme und so
tiefem Gefühl gesprochen, daß Niemand ihren sanften, bittenden
Worten zu widerstehen vermocht hätte, und auch Aurelie empfand
die tiefe Wirkung derselben auf ihr Herz. Die in ihren Augen
schimmernden Thränen waren redende Zeugen davon; dennoch
wies sie diese Empfindungen von sich ab und gab nur der
warnenden Stimme der Vorsicht Gehör, und darum entgegnete sie,
der Prinzessin Hand ergreifend und an die Brust drückend:
»Verkenne mich nicht, Geliebte, wenn ich trotz Deiner Worte
dennoch auf meiner Bitte bestehen muß. Vielleicht wirst Du dereinst,
vielleicht bald meine Beharrlichkeit gerechtfertigt und natürlich
finden, wenn ich Dir sage, daß ich Dir für den Verlust des Bildes
einen Ersatz versprechen darf —«
Sie hielt ein und schaute Sidonie lächelnd an, sich an der
Ueberraschung derselben weidend.
»Du sprichst von einem Ersatz! Was meinst Du, Liebe?« fragte die
Prinzessin erregt, Aurelie voll Spannung anblickend.
»Bemühe Dich, ruhig zu bleiben, denn eine angenehme Nachricht
soll Dich überraschen, auf die Du nicht vorbereitet bist und die Dein
Herz daher um so tiefer berühren wird,« fuhr Aurelie freundlich und
mit bewegter Stimme fort.
»So sage mir, sage mir schnell, was Du mir Gutes mitzutheilen
hast!« rief die Prinzessin in gesteigerter Erregung. »Ich denke,
Liebste, Du erfüllst meine Bitte und gestattest mir die Aufbewahrung
des Medaillons, wenn ich Dich dagegen durch das Original
desselben entschädige« — — bemerkte Aurelie mit Nachdruck.
»Was sagst Du!« rief die Prinzessin, von freudigem Schreck
durchbebt. »Bernhard ist hier, ist zurückgekehrt? Ich soll ihn sehen,
seine Stimme wieder vernehmen? O, Aurelie, Aurelie!«
 Von dieser beglückenden Aussicht überwunden, umschlang sie
die Freundin leidenschaftlich und barg das Haupt an deren Busen.
Laut pochte ihr Herz; ein nervöses Beben ging durch ihren Körper,
dessen Kraft der unverhofften, so beglückenden Mittheilung nicht
gewachsen war.
Aurelie ließ einige Augenblicke vorübergehen, ehe sie antwortete;
sie bedurfte selbst der Sammlung; alsdann entgegnete sie:
»Fasse Dich, fasse Dich, meine theure Sidonie! Ja, Bernhard ist
zurückgekehrt, ist seit gestern Abend hier und wünscht Dich im
Auftrage Deines Bruders, des Herzogs, zu sprechen und Dir ein
Glückwunsch-Schreiben zu Deinem Geburtstage zu überreichen.«
»O, welch ein glücklicher Tag!« fiel Sidonie bewegt ein. »Kaum
wage ich an seine Wirklichkeit zu glauben.«
»Ueberzeuge Dich selbst. Hier ist Bernhard’s Brief, den ich
gestern am Abend empfing und in welchem er mir seine
Anwesenheit und Sendung an Dich anzeigt und mich fragt, in
welcher Weise er sich der letzteren entledigen soll.« »Gieb, gieb!«
rief Sidonie, sich hastig aufrichtend, und nahm mit zitternden
Händen das ihr dargereichte Schreiben. »Ja, ja, seine Schrift, ja, ja,
seine Worte!« fuhr sie in jauchzendem Ton fort, den Brief mit
zärtlichen Blicken betrachtend. »Nach Jahren, nach drei langen,
langen Jahren das erste Lebenszeichen von dem Freunde! O,
konnte mir der Himmel ein süßeres Geschenk an dem heutigen Tage
gewähren?! Nein, o nein! Wie bin ich ihm dankbar für seine Güte, die
mir ein Zeichen ist, daß er mein bekümmertes Herz nicht vergessen
hat. Lies, lies die lieben Worte, Aurelie; ich vermag es nicht,« bat
Sidonie und reichte den Brief der Freundin dar, den sie jedoch mit
Aurelien gemeinschaftlich hielt und, während diese mit leiser Stimme
las, jeden Satz mit den Blicken verfolgte und unhörbar nachsprach.
Der Brief war kurz und enthielt nur die bereits von Aurelien
bezeichnete Mittheilung unter Beobachtung der üblichen Formen,
indem er jede, auch die leiseste Beziehung auf das zwischen ihnen
bestehende freundschaftliche Verhältniß ausschloß.
 »Wie förmlich seine Worte sind und der Freundschaft zu Dir nicht
gedenken!« bemerkte Sidonie, nachdem sie die Durchsicht des
Schreibens beendet hatten.
»Bernhard konnte nicht anders, und ich lobe ihn seiner Vorsicht
halber. Seine Worte sind mit großem Bedacht geschrieben, wie es
die Verhältnisse bedingen. Er konnte nicht wissen, ob der Brief
außer von mir nicht auch noch von anderen Personen gelesen
würde, und zeigt sich daher in diesem Briefe lediglich als den
Gesandten des Fürsten, in dessen Auftrag er erschienen ist,« gab
Aurelie zu bedenken.
»Ich erkenne, er hat recht gethan, wenn mir auch die
Abgemessenheit seines Styls anfangs nicht zusagte. O, mein von
dem langen Weh durchkältetes Herz verlangt ungestüm nach dem
warmen Liebeswort, um sich daran zu erquicken; darum befriedigten
mich seine Worte nicht. Ich sehe jedoch meine Unbilligkeit ein.
Gewiß, gewiß, er konnte nicht anders. Was der Gesandte des
Fürsten zu sagen hatte, hat er ausgesprochen; was der Freund, was
sein Herz zu sprechen hat, durfte nicht durch die Schrift ausgedrückt
werden, das mußte von Lippe zu Lippe, von Herz zu Herzen gehen,«
fiel Sidonie eifrig ein und fügte alsdann hinzu: »Und was hast Du ihm
geantwortet?«
»Ich habe ihm geantwortet, daß es Dein Wunsch ist, ihn um die
eilfte Stunde in Gegenwart des Hofes zu empfangen und das
Schreiben des Herzogs, sowie die mündlichen Aufträge desselben
entgegen zu nehmen,« entgegnete Aurelie mit Betonung.
»O, mein Gott!« seufzte Sidonie bestürzt.
»Beruhige Dich, meine Freundin; es mußte so sein. Ich erkannte
jedoch auch die Nothwendigkeit, daß Du ihn vorher sehen und
sprechen müßtest,« fuhr Aurelie fort.
»Von Herzen danke ich Dir!« rief Sidonie und umarmte die
Freundin. »Du wußtest, wie es sein mußte, sollte ich mich nicht
verrathen, was jedenfalls geschehen wäre, hätte ich ihn zum ersten
Mal vor dem ganzen Hof empfangen müssen. O, wie süß und schön
wird jetzt das Wiedersehen sein! Wie übermannt mich der Gedanke,