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Writing Mary I
History, Historiography, and Fiction
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.
Writing Mary I
History, Historiography, and Fiction
Editors
Valerie Schutte Jessica S. Hower
Beaver Falls, PA, USA Southwestern University
Georgetown, TX, USA
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been
made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
To Eloise and Bates—our sources of inspiration and sleep deprivation.
Acknowledgements
vii
Praise for Writing Mary I
ix
Contents
Introduction 1
Jessica S. Hower and Valerie Schutte
European Entanglements
Venetian Diplomacy Under Mary I 61
Samantha Perez
A Narrative That Was Not Her Own: Mary I
as Mediterranean Queen 87
Darcy Kern
xi
xii CONTENTS
Fact or Fiction
Dressed to Kill: The Fashioning of “Bloody Mary” 167
Emilie M. Brinkman
Mary I in The Ringed Castle 191
Alexander Samson
Still Bloody Mary: Mary I in Historical Fiction 217
Stephanie Russo
Index 241
Notes on Contributors
xiii
xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
J. S. Hower (B)
Southwestern University, Georgetown, TX, USA
e-mail: howerj@southwestern.edu
V. Schutte
Independent Researcher, Beaver Falls, PA, USA
explained that she was not particularly desirous or eager to wed. “But,”
she declared, “if as my progenitors haue done before, it might please
God that I might leaue some fruite of my bodie behind me to be your
Gouernor, I trust you would not onely reioyce therat, but also I know
it would be to your great comforte.”1 Of course, and quite famously,
Mary did not leave any children behind at her death; she was, instead,
succeeded by her younger half-sister Elizabeth I. However, if we isolate
the middle portion of the sentence, in which the queen regnant hopes to
“leaue some fruite of my bodie behind me,” and define that fruit more
broadly than children alone, she was quite successful. Mary appreciated
the power and importance of what might remain after her death, as well
as how she was perceived more broadly. As such, her words encourage
us to do the most with the literary remains composed by the many who
have observed her, in life and in death, at home in England and further
afield abroad, to look at Mary from multiple perspectives, and to appre-
ciate the twists, turns, and continuities in her posthumous representation.
Put simply, the queen’s words serve as a wonderful exhortation to explore
the process and consequences of Writing Mary I .
Following on the heels of a first book dedicated to examining represen-
tations of Queen Mary I in writing, this second book explores the multi-
valent means of writing that queen into text, very capaciously defined,
from England to parts abroad, from the sixteenth century to the present,
and from ostensibly factual primary sources to equally ostensibly fictional
ones. In so doing, it retains the historiographical mission and thrust
of volume one, while complementing and expanding upon its themes,
including the value of transcending literary genres to create a holistic
assessment of how the queen perceived herself and has been perceived
by others across different kinds of sources, the utility of subjecting Mary
to the same sorts of questions and same degree of in-depth scrutiny that
her younger half-sister Elizabeth has received, the centrality of power and
authority alongside foreign diplomacy, and more—all in service of making
a significant contribution to the vibrant field that is twenty-first-century
Marian Studies. Readers eager for more are encouraged to peruse volume
1 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.
INTRODUCTION 3
one and its introduction for a more thorough conversation about the
existing scholarly literature and the two-volume collection’s intervention
in it, as well as for the first eleven essays on Mary as conveyed via the
written word.
Volume two opens by properly locating one of the most important
foreigners at Mary’s court near the center of her monarchy and unpacking
his vital contemporary role as well as his much more modest place in
modern popular memory, helping to unearth the sometimes remembered,
sometimes forgotten, and always important story of the “Ambassador
and Princess.”
Derek M. Taylor’s chapter reevaluates the relationship between Mary
and Holy Roman Imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys. He argues
that returning to familiar, traditional source material—namely, Chapuys’s
correspondence with Charles V as translated and summarized in the
Calendar of State Papers, Spain and Letters and Papers of Henry VIII —
and elevating third-person accounts reveals a new, clearer understanding
of how Princess Mary was both viewed by and used by the Holy
Roman Empire in its diplomatic dealings with England. Moreover, Taylor
purports, Chapuys’s representations of Mary should be given more cred-
ibility than has hitherto been the case (and especially by comparison to
the ambassador’s renderings of Anne Boleyn) because of Mary’s young
age when they met, the genuine friendship that the pair built over time,
and the princess’s precarious place at court. Doing so turns Chapuys’s
letters from mere contextual evidence for the chaotic years when the
divorce crisis wracked Europe into the basis for new appraisals, like a
far more positive view of Mary than comes down to us from Protes-
tant polemics and Taylor’s contention that Chapuys’s concern was not to
damage Anne’s reputation, but rather to protect Mary. Through Taylor’s
Chapuys, we can see the adolescence and maturation of England’s first
regnant queen, and her important place in international politics.
William B. Robison explores Mary I’s relationship with Eustace
Chapuys in modern television and film, or more accurately, the rather
surprising dearth of on-screen representations of the pair. He focuses
on some of the most well-known and highly revered pieces of Tudorist
popular culture produced over the last twenty years to show how oppor-
tunities to depict the Mary–Chapuys dynamic have been refused or
ignored for the sake of apparently sexier topics, such as Henry VIII
and his six wives and the rivalry between Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen
of Scots, or of contemporary messages that seem to be at odds with
4 J. S. HOWER AND V. SCHUTTE
traditional perceptions of the two, like the women’s and civil rights move-
ments. While Mary and Chapuys often receive little or no screen time
separately, let alone together, Robison shows that the decision has more
to do with the biases of writers and producers than with the importance
of the princess and ambassador as historical figures and puts film markedly
at odds with newer historiographical trends. Significantly, Robison finds
that, for all its faults and in contrast to the supposedly more high-brow
Wolf Hall , Showtime’s The Tudors conveys Mary and Chapuys in a more
successfully, casting them as historical actors with their own agency who
were paramount to happenings at Henry’s court.
Moving beyond Mary I’s years as a hopeful future queen and
enveloping more than even the expansive Holy Roman Empire, the
second set of chapters in this volume draws our gaze to other locales
implicated in her reign, whether as a crucial diplomatic contact or
because she was their queen consort, despite the lack of attention these
“European Entanglements” have received in scholarly, popular, and
even contemporary accounts.
Samantha Perez examines Mary I and her court through the eyes of
the Venetian ambassadors stationed there. By shifting emphasis away from
the much more frequently examined Spanish and French perspectives
and thereby complicating the picture of mid-sixteenth-century European
diplomacy. She finds out just how important Mary was to navigating the
vicissitudes of Continental politics, restoration Catholicism, and Italian
affairs—as well as how acutely aware the Venetians were of that impor-
tance. Moreover, after briefly chronicling the rise of the Venetian embassy
in Tudor England early in the reign of Henry VII and then contin-
uing the narrative through to its departure over fifty years later, Perez
uses their ambassadorial correspondence to shed new light on the queen
herself, in matters of religion, rule, personality, and more, as viewed
through Venice’s lens. Offering a fresh contribution to current discus-
sions on Anglo-Italian relations and broader conceptions of early modern
monarchical authority, diplomatic dynamics, and foreign policy, Perez
argues that a Venetian look at Mary helps us better understand both the
significance of her reign and England’s role on the international stage.
Darcy Kern reminds us that owing to her marriage to Philip II, Mary
was not only queen of England, Ireland, and (nominally) France, but also
queen of Naples and, after 1556, of Spain—despite the lack of atten-
tion her role as consort in these more southern territories has received.
Kern explains why: as Mary never stepped foot in either country, the
INTRODUCTION 5
queen was little known and rarely perceived as have any real authority
in either. More specifically, Kern argues that in Naples, Mary’s power
was inextricably linked to that of her husband and, as such, when he was
perceived of as weak (which was so often the case), so too was Mary. In
Spain, Mary was also marginalized and deemed lacking in royal authority
there, this time on the basis of her power in England, the dominance of
her Privy Council in political matters, and the nature of English society
and governance more generally; her appearance, sexuality, and fertility,
which failed to meet Spanish standards of beauty and fecundity; and her
distance, both physical and imagined, from the Mediterranean country
and its actual rule. To make matters worse, Philip did not really acknowl-
edge his wife as Queen of Spain either, going so far as to ignore her in
official correspondence near the end of her reign. Even though Mary was
queen consort of these two realms, she maintained little if any authority
among her Neapolitan and Spanish subjects and her image has been all
but lost as a consequence.
Fixing entirely on the site of Mary’s more famous consortship and
moving the chronology ahead, two more essays uncover how the queen
appears when “Speaking from Spain,” in the past and in the present.
Here, it seems that complexity, nuance, multiplicity, even favor in Mary’s
own lifetime and in the century that followed have given way to generality
and easy stereotyping in our time.
Kelsey J. Ihinger uses a close analysis of Mary I as depicted in Spain
during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to challenge the automatic
assumption that any mention of a blood-soaked, tragic Tudor monarch,
especially a “bloody” Tudor queen, necessarily refers to her, rather than
her father or half-sister, and bring to the fore a far more complicated
story. In the hands of Spanish writers, who produced everything from
traditional histories to pamphlets, popular plays, and poems, Mary’s image
was a positive, if ever-shifting one, subject to frequent reshaping and revi-
sion as Anglo-Spanish relations, the broader European context, and global
imperial politics themselves shifted. Eminently useful and malleable across
her lifetime and in death, and especially during the four critical stages that
Ihinger privileges, Mary functioned as a means by which her husband’s
subjects could comment on changing circumstances, transforming their
queen consort from a superlative and well-rounded leader, to a strong
if less agentic defender of the Catholic faith, to an inspiring symbol
of saintly piety, to a manifestation of Spain’s altered perceptions of an
ascendant England. Ihinger shows that there was, then, never one single,
6 J. S. HOWER AND V. SCHUTTE
stable Spanish Mary, but rather multiple versions, each constructed and
reconstructed to suit the architect’s needs.
Tamara Pérez-Fernández surveys modern Spanish media depictions
of Mary I. Charting the significant if modest burst of recent television
episodes, radio broadcasts, print articles, and digital pieces that portray
the queen for Spanish audiences, Pérez-Fernández finds that Mary is,
unsurprisingly, largely stereotyped as “Bloody Mary” and presented as
a failure of queenship and motherhood. Following extensive quantitative
as well as qualitative analysis, the author argues that conservative media
tends to be more interested in Mary and to offer a more sympathetic view
of her than its more progressive counterpart, yet neither offers a nuanced
picture of Spain’s queen consort, instead resorting to familiar images
of failure, unattractiveness, religious zealotry, instability, and childhood
trauma. Even though these renderings have emerged simultaneous with
groundbreaking revisionist histories and an increased interest in mining
the past for popular culture, the author shows that mainstream Spanish
sources have not adopted the newest historiography of Mary, resulting in
the regurgitation of old tropes. Nevertheless, there is reason for hope; as
the more in-depth, subtle study of important women in Spanish history
now grips the academy, perhaps it will one day grip the press and screen
as well.
The volume and, by extension, the full collection closes with a final
set of three chapters at the messy intersection of history and literature,
showcasing what it means to write about and portray Mary I in our own
time, whether in the form of screenplays, theatrical plays, or novels. The
authors demonstrate that there is both “Fact and Fiction” at work in
popular culture that centers on the queen or her era, but also find that
these pieces are few and far between and that not all of them are informed
by current historiographical trends or even what we “know” about the
past in which Mary lived. The scoresheet shows a decidedly mixed result.
In this, perhaps, historical fiction, in all of its forms, is not unlike academic
scholarship: there is much to commend revisionist work on Mary I, yet
there is still a long way to go.
Emilie M. Brinkman investigates the role of costume in the construc-
tion of Mary I’s negative reputation in history and in popular culture.
Beginning with arguably the most potent modern visual representation,
Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth (1998), then shifting back in time to fill in
the gap between the sixteenth and late twentieth centuries, Brinkman
examines descriptions of Mary’s dress during her lifetime, as well as how
INTRODUCTION 7
the queen was dressed in posthumous stage and screen productions. She
argues that beginning in the seventeenth century, sartorial depictions of
Mary do not accurately reflect what the queen wore; rather, they fabricate
and reinforce a dark, bloody image. During her reign, and even reaching
back to her childhood, Mary seemed to favor a French style of dress, as
opposed to the Spanish style she is typically portrayed in. In two early
seventeenth-century plays, staged amid Stuart-era anti-papal hysteria,
Mary is given all the material trappings of Catholicism and her atten-
tion to dress is meant to be a commentary on the opulence and excess
supposedly inherent to the faith. The eighteenth-century Jacobite threat
further exacerbated Mary’s bad reputation, and this is what manifested
in the nineteenth century, as Mary’s concern for proper attire borders on
the obsessive—a warning against the tyranny and vanity of Catholic rule—
and she is increasingly appareled in red. Brinkman contends that Mary’s
wardrobe is an understudied aspect of her reign, and must be interrogated
as more than merely a foil to the well-dressed Elizabeth.
Alexander Samson’s chapter focuses on the fifth installment of Dorothy
Dunnett’s The Lymond Chronicles, set in the reign of Mary I and Philip
II. Like much of Dunnett’s work, The Ringed Castle (1971) has received
almost no academic treatment, yet Samson shows that it is meticulously
researched and written, informed by copious primary source material,
brimming with historically accurate detail, and keenly aware if not actu-
ally ahead of the relevant scholarly literature, not to mention a world-wide
bestseller. Moreover, he argues, the novel offers a unique perspective on
Mary and Philip’s court, appreciating the interplay between individual
and broader forces, bringing the mid-Tudor world and its cultural fabric
tangibly to life, and foregrounding England’s activity abroad, especially
in Russia, as well as the gendered dynamics at work with a woman on
the throne—all in a way that exemplifies the close, complex relationship
between history and literature. Dunnett’s duly complex Mary is both
the familiar bloody queen and the more sympathetic, politically astute
woman, as influenced by nineteenth- and twentieth-century histories that
vilify and pity her and Dunnett’s own reading of sixteenth-century sources
that acknowledged Mary’s achievements.
Stephanie Russo offers a careful study of twentieth- and twenty-first-
century historical fiction featuring Mary I, ultimately showing that these
fictionalized portrayals have not caught up to the historical revision of
Mary’s reign championed by academics over the same period, but instead
8 J. S. HOWER AND V. SCHUTTE
2 Conyers Read, The Tudors : Personalities and Practical Politics in Sixteenth Century
England (New York: Norton, 1936), 144.
Ambassador and Princess
‘A Paragon of Beauty, Goodness,
and Virtue’: Princess Mary in the Writings
of Imperial Ambassador Eustace Chapuys
Derek M. Taylor
D. M. Taylor (B)
West Virginia State University, Institute, WV, USA
e-mail: derek.taylor@wvstateu.edu
beginning to sprout, and the friendship was tied to some of the starkest
changes made by Parliament at Henry’s behest to the Church of England.
This important period in Mary’s development is portrayed in regular
correspondence between Chapuys and Mary’s cousin, Emperor Charles
V. These letters, translated in the nineteenth century and available in
full in the Calendar of State Papers and among the Letters and Papers
series, provide us with assessments of not only Mary’s political value
to Charles’s goals as emperor, but more importantly to this project,
of Mary’s person.1 An assessment of these works provides access to a
version of Chapuys’s thoughts about her that direct correspondence with
the princess might not reveal for a variety of reasons, including that
Chapuys might have feared being overly negative with Mary since that
could jeopardize the stability of his own position. After all, Mary’s well-
being was not the primary concern of the emperor throughout Chapuys’s
embassy. Instead, Mary’s plight became a development of interest only
after Chapuys had been there for several years. Mary’s lack of active
participation in these epistolary conversations allows this study to add
to historiography regarding third-party opinion of Mary both as a human
being and as a person of political interest to foreign entities, namely by
the Holy Roman Empire and its representative in England. This work,
therefore, fits alongside recent scholarship that address these third-party
writings such as Valerie Schutte’s “Under the Influence: The Impact of
1 Calendar of State Papers, Spain, Volume 4 Part 1, Henry VIII, 1529–1530. Edited by
Pascual de Gayangos (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1879); Calendar of State
Papers, Spain, Volume 4, Part 2, Henry VIII, 1530–33. Edited by Gayangos (London:
Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1882). Abbreviated as CSP: Spain in subsequent cita-
tions; Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 6, 1533. Edited
by James Gairdner (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1882); Letters and Papers,
Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 7, 1534. Edited by Gairdner (London: Her
Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1883); Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII,
Volume 8, January–July 1535. Edited by Gairdner (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary
Office, 1885); Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 9, August–
December 1535. Edited by Gairdner (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1886);
Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 10, January–June 1536.
Edited by Gairdner (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1887); Letters and Papers,
Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 11, July–December 1536. Edited by Gairdner
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1888); and Letters and Papers, Foreign and
Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 17, 1542. Edited by Gairdner and R.H. Brodie (London:
Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1900). Abbreviated at L&P with volume notations in
subsequent citations.
‘A PARAGON OF BEAUTY, GOODNESS, AND VIRTUE’ … 13
2 Aysha Pollintz, “Religion and Translation at the Court of Henry VIII: Princess Mary,
Katherine Parr and the Paraphrases of Erasmus,” in Susan Doran and Thomas S. Freeman,
eds., Mary Tudor: Old and New Perspectives (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011),
123–137.
3 Valerie Schutte, “Under the Influence: The Impact of Queenly Book Dedications on
Princess Mary,” in Sarah Duncan and Valerie Schutte, eds., The Birth of a Queen: Essays
on the Quincentenary of Mary I (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 39–40.
4 A.G. Dickens, The English Reformation (University Park, PA: Penn State University
Press, Second Edition, 1989), 12–15. Dickens argues that religious change in England
was fundamentally tied to movements that predated Henry VIII’s reign, and gives pride
of place to Wycliffe’s movement, whose followers in turn became more openly receptive
to Lutheranism.
14 D. M. TAYLOR
English progress, and her relationship with Chapuys can more accept-
edly considered to be a moot point. Followed by the works of Patrick
Collinson and Diarmaid McCulloch, the English Reformation had been
made “properly Protestant,” as described by Christopher Haigh.5
Due in part to the inconsistency of his reports regarding Anne Boleyn
as well as his identity as a Catholic Savoyard, Chapuys has not traditionally
been considered a significant figure in the English Reformation or within
the field of Marian studies. Retha Warnicke’s The Rise and Fall of Anne
Boleyn is perhaps the best example of the difficulty historians have experi-
enced in properly positioning and considering the ambassador. Warnicke
argued that Chapuys’s characterizations of Boleyn should be discounted
due to their inconsistencies with other third-party accounts of identical
events, and Warnicke portrayed Chapuys as an untrustworthy historical
source.6 At the same time, she accepted Chapuys’s accounts when it
suited her arguments.7 Warnicke’s trouble results from not considering
the context of Chapuys’s role and identity in determining the content
of his reports. Her challenge to the reliability of Chapuys’s accounts was
nevertheless a positive development in itself, as prior to her work few chal-
lenged the validity of the source material regarding Boleyn. This was the
case for many historians, including Mortimer Levine.8
Historians have more recently begun to fully recognize Chapuys’s
importance to the Tudor era and are taking pains to properly contex-
tualize his accounts. Lauren Mackay’s biography of Chapuys was a first.9
Mackay’s accounts of Chapuys’s upbringing in Savoy and of his personal
5 Christopher Haigh, “Dickens and the English Reformation,” Historical Research, No.
77 (2004), 25.
6 Retha M. Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1989), 1–3. Chapuys’s references to Boleyn as “the whore” and “the
concubine” were terms for Henry’s second queen that were coined by Dr. Pedro Ortiz,
the Holy Roman Imperial ambassador to the Vatican while Chapuys was in England.
Chapuys followed Ortiz’s lead in such references in subsequent correspondence between
the emissaries and elsewhere.
7 Warnicke, Rise and Fall, 72.
8 Warnicke, Rise and Fall, 66; Mortimer Levine, Tudor Dynastic Problems, 1460–1571
(New York: Allen & Unwin, 1975), 55–66. Warnicke notes the existence of this problem,
indicating its negative impact on historical understanding of not just Anne Boleyn, but
also of Catherine Howard.
9 Lauren Mackay, Inside the Tudor Court: Henry VIII and His Six Wives Through the
Writings of the Spanish Ambassador, Eustace Chapuys (London: Amberley, 2014).
‘A PARAGON OF BEAUTY, GOODNESS, AND VIRTUE’ … 15
13 David Loades, Mary Tudor: A Life (Malden: Blackwell Publishers, Second Edition,
1992), 89.
14 Ralph A. Houlebrooke, The English Family 1450–1700 (London: Routledge, 1984),
215.
‘A PARAGON OF BEAUTY, GOODNESS, AND VIRTUE’ … 17
15 Chapuys to Charles V, Nov. 27, 1530, “Spain: November 1530, 26–31” in CSP:
Spain, Vol. 4, Part 1, 819. Chapuys first mentions a potential marriage for Mary in
October 1529, with the rumor of Henry marrying her to Henry Howard, oldest son of
the Duke of Norfolk.
16 Chapuys to Charles V, Nov, 27 1530.
17 Rodrigo Nino to Charles V, Nov. 30, 1530, CSP: Spain, Vol. 4, Part 1, 830.
18 D. M. TAYLOR
earliest dispatches, before the two were well acquainted.18 He saw her
as collateral damage to Henry’s actions, and worse, that her father was
not mindful or bothered by the damage being done.19 It was as Mary
became increasingly isolated from her father, however, that the combina-
tion of Chapuys’s Catholicism and his own excitable nature began to find
a welcome friend in the princess.
By the time Chapuys wrote to the emperor on April 6, 1533, Henry
had secretly married Anne Boleyn, and the new queen was pregnant.
In reaction to Catherine’s pleas for help and their shared concern for
Mary’s well-being, Chapuys wrote that, “the great interest I take in Your
Majesty’s concerns compels me to say that, considering the very great
injury done to Madame, your aunt, you can hardly avoid making war
upon this king and kingdom.”20 In this same letter, Chapuys argued that
military action would not solely be on behalf of Mary and Catherine, but
also a religious matter. Also implicating Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in
Mary and Catherine’s plights, he added that war against England would
prevent the kingdom from alienating itself entirely from Catholicism and
becoming Lutheran, a development Chapuys feared was likely to occur
thanks to Cranmer and the king. Chapuys wanted not only for Charles to
declare war on England, but for Pope Clement VII to “call in the secular
arm” and endorse such military action.21
It was, in part, Mary’s popularity that lead Chapuys to advise such
a course of action, although his opinion could have been colored by his
own affinity for the princess. He wrote, “It is very true, that if the Princess
were not in such danger as I have said, and that if the people here did not
take up this affair a little warmly, they would lose heart and affection.”22
Chapuys quickly apologized for what he feared might be construed as
18 Chapuys to Charles V, Dec. 9, 1529, CSP: Spain, Vol. 4, Part 1, 361–362. Chapuys
writes that Mary is in Windsor, and reports that his sources tell him she is being treated
well below a person of her rank and birth. He adds that he recently received a message
from Mary indicating she was working to find a way Chapuys could visit her without
being noticed.
19 Chapuys to Charles V, Jan. 20, 1530, CSP: Spain, Vol. 4, Part 1, 433–434. Here,
Chapuys expresses concern that Mary’s marriage potential would be greatly harmed should
Henry be granted a divorce and the princess be declared illegitimate.
20 Chapuys to Charles V, April 10, 1533, CSP: Spain, Vol. 4, Part 2, 629.
21 Chapuys to Charles V, April 10, 1533.
22 Chapuys to Charles V, April 10, 1533, L&P, Vol. 6, 151.
‘A PARAGON OF BEAUTY, GOODNESS, AND VIRTUE’ … 19
an emotional outburst, and added, “Pray, pardon me, if I thus speak out
of compassion for the Queen and the Princess.”23 Through this letter,
Mary is viewed as not only beloved by her father’s subjects, but also as a
bastion of the Catholic faith in England. Her loss of legal status as heir
had, if anything, a positive effect on her public image. This passion for
Mary’s well-being reached significant heights at times, and provides ample
opportunity to question Chapuys as a credible source for the period, as it
is easy to draw a connective line between his excitability and the sugges-
tions and requests he presented to the emperor with regard to the events
he observed.
Perhaps the best example of Chapuys’s tendency to either exaggerate
or to fall victim to worst-case scenario rumor regarding Mary came in
his reporting of Elizabeth’s birth, on September 7, 1533. Three days
later, Chapuys wrote that he had been told the baby was to be named
Mary so that the newborn not only assumed the position of Henry’s
eldest child in the line of succession, but completed the process by taking
her name.24 The exasperation expressed in Chapuys’s letter to Charles
regarding this development is revealing in numerous ways. First, it vividly
illustrates how affected Chapuys could be by the prospect of Mary being
disrespected, marginalized, or dispossessed. It also shows that his ability to
discern between credible information and rumor was possibly subject to
his emotional attachment to the subject. Chapuys lunged to the conclu-
sion that what he had been told was true rather than questioning the
validity of the information. Furthermore, it indicated the possibility that
perhaps his affinity for Mary was so well known that those from whom
he gained information might have been toying with the ambassador, or
even feeding him false information knowing that he would report it to the
emperor. There is no indication of Chapuys’s reaction when he learned
that Anne Boleyn’s daughter was indeed named Elizabeth, though it is
difficult to imagine that it would be lacking either relief or embarrass-
ment. His next letter to Charles, dated September 15, simply stated, “The
daughter of the lady has been named Elizabeth, not Mary.”25 In the same
letter, Chapuys explained how Mary had reacted to the developments,
and to the assumption that Henry would further diminish her household
her from whatever ill effects Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn were
bound to cast upon her. The letter is a good indicator of how Catherine’s
increased expression of piety had clouded her vision of the reality that
Chapuys and Fisher were arming Mary to help forward their own goals.
The comparison between Chapuys’s description of Mary and Catherine’s
tone in addressing her daughter indicates that it was Chapuys who had
gained the upper hand influencing and guiding the princess by this point.
The ambassador saw her as a capable and useful political resource for
the aims of the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic Church, while
her mother still viewed her solely as a child. At the same time, Chapuys
viewed Mary as an impressionable young friend for whom he felt a protec-
tive responsibility. He regularly included reports to Charles about the
devotion the public retained for Mary.34 It is a telling characteristic of
his relationship with the princess that with all the domestic and inter-
national political intrigue playing out around him, Chapuys was most
moved by the safety and well-being of a young woman still in her teenage
years. Chapuys’s place in history is largely due to his antagonistic stance
regarding Anne Boleyn, but this is perhaps due to historical interest being
more vested in conflict rather than agreement. The evidence that remains
from the period, however, suggests quite strongly that Chapuys was more
interested and invested in protecting Mary than he was in damaging
Anne.
Chapuys was also involved in playing matchmaker for Mary, and in
this pursuit he definitely had designs on securing the English throne for
Catholicism. Not long after Elizabeth’s birth, Chapuys agreed, with input
from Catherine and Mary, to suggest to Charles that Reginald Pole was
a fitting match for Mary. Pole was the son of Mary’s governess, Margaret
Pole, who was herself the daughter of the former Duke of Clarence.
Reginald Pole was at the time studying at the University of Padua, and
if Charles was able to bring him into the emperor’s service, Catherine
would gladly consent to have her daughter marry him, “and the Princess
would not refuse.”35 Within six months, Charles V issued a policy that
34 Chapuys to Charles V, Oct. 16, 1533, CSP: Spain, Vol. 4, Part 2, 828. Chapuys
here writes, “It is impossible for me to describe the love and affection which the English
bear to their Princess, but they are already so much accustomed to see and tolerate such
disorderly things that they tacitly commit the redress of the same to God and to Your
Majesty.” This dispatch was sent in the wake of the reduction of Mary’s household.
35 Chapuys to Charles V, Sept. 27, 1533, L&P, Vol. 6, 486.
‘A PARAGON OF BEAUTY, GOODNESS, AND VIRTUE’ … 23
Mary should not be married without the consent of her mother and the
emperor.36 The move was largely ceremonial and part of a larger state-
ment regarding the emperor’s distrust of English relations with France,
but it nevertheless sent a message of sorts that since Henry VIII no
longer appeared to care for the well-being of Catherine and his first-born
daughter, the Holy Roman Empire would gladly have them.
36 The Emperor’s Policy, Feb. 25, 1534, “Henry VIII: February 1534, 21–25,” in
L&P, Vol. 7 , 89–90.
37 King Henry VIII, “The Princess Mary”, Sept. 30. 1533, L&P, Vol. 6, 491.
38 King Henry VIII, “The Princess Mary”, 491.
39 Chapuys to Charles V, Feb. 26, 1534, L&P, Vol. 7 , 92.
24 D. M. TAYLOR
To the ambassador’s surprise, the Privy Council told him that Cromwell
and Norfolk wanted to hear what the ambassador had to say. Though
Cromwell could not attend a meeting regarding the matter, Chapuys
reported to the emperor that Norfolk could not disprove what Chapuys
had argued regarding Mary’s poor treatment, but that he needed to pass
on the ambassador’s sentiments to those who knew the situation better.
Norfolk advised Chapuys to tread carefully when granted an audience
with Henry, and it proved to be sage advice.40
This was one of the quintessential moments of Chapuys’s tenure, as it
displayed his knowledge of English history, his understanding of ecclesias-
tical law, and his willingness to face down Henry VIII, all while defending
Mary’s rights and honor. It also turned out to be the first instance in
which Henry was so irritated with Chapuys that he made a less-than
veiled allusion to revoking the ambassador’s station in the kingdom.
Chapuys reported he told Henry that, “All the Parliaments could not
make the Princess a bastard, for the cognizance of cases concerning legit-
imacy belonged to ecclesiastical judges. Even if his marriage with the
Queen were null, she was legitimate, owning to the lawful ignorance of
her parents.”41 Knowing he was not free to address parliament, Chapuys
asked Henry if it was possible for Mary to be allowed to live with her
mother and to be better treated. The king replied that as Mary’s father,
he was better equipped to determine what was best for her and, further-
more, he “might dispose of her as he wishes, without anyone laying down
the law to him, and without giving account to anyone.”42 This not only
is indicative of Mary’s tenuous status within the kingdom at the time,
but the potential risks to her life at play, and further, her father’s attitude
toward her as an individual.
Henry’s claim came to fruition, in some respects, in April 1534, when
Henry and Anne were visiting Elizabeth’s household. With the king’s
apparent consent, attendants kept Mary from seeing her father by keeping
her in her chamber throughout the two-day visit. Chapuys wrote that
what happened to Mary during the visit was worse than prison. Anne’s
aunt, Anne Shelton, was Mary’s governess and, according to Chapuys’s
dispatch, told Mary, “the King her father did not care in the least that
she should renounce her title, since by statute she was declared a bastard
and incapable; but that if she were in the King’s place, she would kick her
out of the King’s house for disobedience, and moreover the King himself
has said that he would make her lose her head for violating the laws
of his realm.”43 Mary’s physician had reported the incident to Chapuys,
telling the ambassador that she had recounted the event to him in Latin
so that no others present could understand.44 Chapuys’s own assessment
indicated that while he did not believe Henry would harm Mary, those
loyal to the Boleyn family were far more likely to do so.45 Although
the ambassador repeatedly wrote of plots being devised to end Mary’s
life and he never missed an opportunity to suggest or accuse Anne of
being the instigator of such plots, there was never direct evidence of such
machinations.
Chapuys reported another confrontation between Mary and Anne a
month earlier. In that instance, Mary insisted that her mother was the only
person whom she would ever recognize as queen. In Chapuys’s account,
Anne ended the argument acting, “very indignant, and intended to bring
down the pride of this unbridled Spanish blood, as she said. She will
do the worst she can.”46 The problem with taking this as an accurate
portrayal in this supposed argument is that Chapuys left the issue there,
and immediately in his next sentence began to write of parliament’s decla-
ration that Catherine could no longer call herself queen and could not
retain the items that had been bestowed upon her as queen. That Chapuys
shifted focus so quickly suggests that although he might have feared a
plot against Mary’s life, he did not consider it a grave enough threat to
warrant further elaboration, much less offer a plan of defense. It is here
that the line between Chapuys’s role as ambassador and as a personal ally
to Mary might have blurred. While he was concerned, the information
was little more than a seed to plant in the mind of the emperor to do with
what he wished. The ambassador had already suggested military interven-
tion on Mary’s behalf, thus the notion of repeating the request without
hard evidence of new activity warranting it would run the risk of dimin-
ishing the validity of the earlier proposal suggested by the ambassador and
Fisher.
Mary was involved in another confrontation later in the month, this
time with a member of Elizabeth’s traveling company. At this point,
Chapuys wrote that he regretted urging Mary to be so forthright in
protesting her situation, and he told Charles that he had consulted
Catherine on the matter.47 In this instance, it was Mary who turned what
could possibly have been an act of courtesy into a scene. The unnamed
member of the traveling company had tried to put her in a carriage to
move to a new household along with the rest of Elizabeth’s staff, and
Mary strongly protested. “She made a public protest of the compulsion
used, and that her act should not prejudice her right and title,” Chapuys
wrote.48 This is one of the few instances in which Chapuys suggested that
Mary’s response overshadowed the perceived slight.
It was not the last time she would act in such a manner. In June
1534, Mary sent a letter of protest to numerous foreign officials including
Chapuys and Charles V. Written in Latin, the letter included a sentence
that translates to, “To clarify all the details of this Scripture we have, we
say, we maintain, assert, and protest that our identity is a mere fact of our
knowledge and after mature deliberation on the testimony of my manual,
a sign and a seal of my own.”49 Through this, Mary was insisting to the
world outside of England that in no way did she intend to renounce her
title or give in to the pressures to marry or enter a convent without the
consent of her mother. This in itself could easily have been interpreted
as treason enough to warrant her execution. As it turned out, Chapuys
had actually written the letter and gave it to Catherine to pass along to
Mary to rewrite, copy, sign, and distribute ten months earlier.50 The same
dispatch in which Chapuys explains this scenario to Charles includes yet
another suggestion that Anne was intending to have Mary killed in July
of that year, when Henry had planned to visit France.51
It is, however, difficult to tell for certain how much of Chapuys’s sensi-
tivity to Mary’s precarious position was due to his own interpretation of
events. Much of the flair added to his explanation of incidents could have
come from Catherine, or at least his understandings of those events could
have been to seem more severe due to Catherine’s input. At issue is that
little is known about the order in which news traveled between these
three individuals. In a letter Chapuys wrote to Charles dated February
9, 1535, it appears Catherine contacted Chapuys through her physician
to inform the ambassador that, once again, Mary was being threatened
with execution or lifetime imprisonment if she did not soon acquiesce
and swear to the Act of Supremacy.52 This adds another potential vari-
able to the conveyance and accurate reporting of facts in the form of
Catherine’s physician, and Mary’s earlier passage of information through
her own doctor should also be considered with regard to how the record
as revealed through epistolary documentation can be less than objec-
tively reliable. While historical accuracy is perhaps lessened or lost through
these letters, they reveal significant elements of the personalities at play in
these scenarios. Of course, the primary personality revealed here is that
of Chapuys, but it is through his accounts that we are at least able to see
what at least one diplomat, and one with greater access to her than any
other, thought of her in this era.
Mary sought Charles’ aid through Chapuys in early 1535, her goal to
have Charles ask the king directly to allow her to live with her mother.
Several physicians who had attended Mary had concluded her recurring
poor health was due to what today would perhaps classify as depression,
and these physicians added that if she would be allowed to stay with
Catherine, much of the situation would possibly alleviate itself.53 Chapuys
tried to intercede on her behalf, and Henry was reportedly gracious in
hearing Mary’s case. However, the king said he could not allow such a
move, because Mary was at that time betrothed to the Dauphin of France.
The risk of Catherine taking her out of England in secret to avoid this
match was too great. Charles V, meanwhile, said nothing to the king of
much opportunity to show themselves. Her piety has never been called
into question by objective historians.
Although Henry diminished Mary’s household and eventually moved
her into a house she shared with Elizabeth, the king was always mindful
of his eldest daughter’s intermittent health issues regarding her menstrual
cycle, and although he forbade Mary and Catherine to correspond,
evidence shows that he was not keen on enforcing that order.58 It was
in this area that Chapuys served as a conduit between the Lady Mary and
her mother. There were few people better qualified by that point to serve
in such a role. As such, Chapuys’s accounts of the interaction between
the two women are arguably the best source of the relationship between
Mary and her mother during this period. Chapuys wrote the emperor on
September 6, 1535 that he, “sent lately a servant to request the King to
send his physician to the Princess, both on account of a certain rheum,
and to provide against a return of her ordinary complain(t), which she
dreads, in the coming winter.”59 Mary’s menstrual problems had plagued
her since the onset of adolescence. By the time she was nineteen she was
using Chapuys and his chosen representatives as messengers to speak to
her father regarding them. It was not the first time Mary’s menstrual
complications were the focus of conversation between Chapuys and the
king. The ambassador had previously taken the opportunity to chastise
Henry about his treatment of Mary and its negative effect on her health.60
This is an area in which Cromwell could have been helpful to Mary’s
cause, at least in the way Chapuys represents the story. The more
Chapuys pushed for a favorable change of lodging for Mary, the more
it alerted Henry that something of which he would not approve was
afoot. Cromwell’s involvement, however, might have potentially allowed
Chapuys greater leeway to plan an escape attempt, which had become
an increasingly popular idea among Charles V and his advisors since the
beginning of 1535. Though they were friends, Chapuys grew suspicious
of Cromwell during the year, often due to conflicting information he
received that contradicted Cromwell’s professed allegiance to Mary. This
was part of a match of wits between the two men, and while Chapuys
grew frustrated with Cromwell, there was no person in England other
of a larger strategy to restore her status, and thus increase her potential
political power.65 Neither she nor Chapuys were happy with how it was
obtained, but a utilitarian view indicates that it was the prudent move for
her to make.
By 1542, Mary had made a permanent return to court under her
father’s reign, and Chapuys was reporting news regarding Mary more
frequently to Queen Mary of Hungary than to Charles V. The emperor
had turned over considerable authority in the empire to his sister, and
she was not unfamiliar with the situation in England, having received
updates from the princess herself since the younger Mary’s teenage years.
Most commonly, Chapuys’s letters to the queen contained updates on
Mary’s health, which continued to cause problems for her throughout
her life.66 Updates regarding the potential match between the princess
and the Duke of Orleans were a common topic of this correspondence,
as well, suggesting that Mary of Hungary had assumed a role of consulta-
tion and even guidance in matters regarding Mary as she navigated early
adulthood.
Chapuys has most frequently been viewed by historians as a key source
for understanding Henry VIII’s pursuit of an annulment and the Anne
Boleyn era of his reign, even though Chapuys remained in England in
the service of the Holy Roman Empire until just before Henry’s death.
However, what is of equal value in Chapuys’s correspondence is his
portrayal of Mary through the course of her father’s reign. This corre-
spondence, as emotional as it often was, provides a window through
which we can see Mary’s development as well as her reaction to her
father’s decisions and actions, even if the window includes a screen repre-
sented by Chapuys’s interpretations of Mary’s view. In the process of
assessing Chapuys’s writing, we can see a young woman navigate the
volatile political landscape of 1530s England as a potential ruler of the
kingdom and as a daughter who had been cast aside for reasons not
of her own making. Ultimately, Chapuys provides the most complete
third-person account of Mary’s life from early adolescence until the late
1530s. This highlights the importance of third-party correspondence and
private writing in the construction of our understanding of the period
and the persons living within it. Perhaps more importantly, it indicates
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