The Husbands of Mary Tudor

Part II: The English Marriage

Last week, we left off with Mary Tudor being a very young, very beautiful, very merry widow. Many men had their eyes on her, not least of all her former son-in-law, Francis I of France, and her brother, Henry VIII of England. I don’t mean that they personally desired Mary – though Francis probably did, being one of France’s randiest kings – but each of them wanted control over Mary’s next marriage.

This was only one of the many pissing contests in which Henry and Francis would engage over the years. Reportedly, one of the first things that Henry asked the Venetian ambassador upon Francis’ ascension to the throne was whether Francis was as tall as Henry. Henry was considered exceptionally tall for the times, and he was rather proud of that. Unfortunately, Francis was also very tall. Ah, maybe he was very fat though, Henry asked next. Alas, no. OK, OK … but his legs? Rather thin, Henry was told. Henry was delighted. FINALLY something he could beat the detested Frenchman at; he opened the front of his doublet and invited the Venetian ambassador to admire his “good calf”.

If you think Henry was the only vain one, you’d be wrong. Francis was just as bad.

Francis wanted Mary to marry a Frenchman in order to keep her substantial dowry in France. Henry wanted use Mary – AGAIN – as a pawn to secure a political alliance, most likely with an enemy of France. Mary wanted none of it. What she wanted was a man called Charles Brandon. And she was determined to get him.

Charles Brandon was the son of Henry VII’s standard bearer, a minor English lord. His fortunes were made, however, when he became Henry VIII’s bosom pal at an early age. Henry was loyal to his friends, so Charles was basically set for life; Henry made him Duke of Suffolk. Charles became part of Henry’s “Rat Pack”, a group of rowdy young men who jousted, rode horses, and partied with the young king. Although Henry was, by all accounts, well-read, articulate and intelligent, his pal Charles doesn’t come across as, ahem, especially scholarly. But he was very tall, very good-looking, and of a similar disposition to Henry: hale and hearty, generally affable, and pretty wily underneath an easy-going exterior.

Charles was also HELLA messy in his personal life. By the age of 30, he had been married twice, and had fathered numerous children, all but 2 of them illegitimate. He had also caught the eye of his best friend’s youngest sister: Mary Tudor. To borrow from today’s parlance, Charles was a f*ckboy, but Mary was 18 and didn’t know any better. If you watched The Tudors back in the day, you’ll remember that Charles was played by a (young) Henry Cavill in what I think was an inspired bit of casting (much better than Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Henry VIII, let’s be honest). Keep that in mind, and you’ll probably have a good idea of what was going on between Charles and Mary: two hot people, hot for each other.

First, of course, Mary had to go and marry the “ancient” Louis XII. Charles actually accompanied her entourage to France for the wedding, leaving only a few weeks before Louis kicked the bucket. This is the point where Henry VIII made a big mistake. He sent Charles back to France to fetch Mary home.

Supposedly, Henry picked Charles for this mission because he thought that Charles would be able to charm Francis and get him to agree to allow Mary to leave France. Even if on paper this was a good plan, it was still a bad idea. Remember how Mary had made Henry promise that she would be allowed to marry the man of her choice the second time around? She had also made it clear that the man of her choice was Charles … a man too insignificant, politically speaking, to be a suitable match for a princess. Henry had no intention of letting his sister marry Charles, best friend or no, but he still sent Charles over to France. He first made Charles promise not to marry Mary which … hahahahaha! Oh, you sweet summer child, Henry.

Meanwhile, Mary was busy laying down her own plans. First, she went about securing an ally: Francis I. She knew he wanted her to marry a French lord, but she also knew that what Francis wanted even MORE was for Mary NOT to marry someone from an enemy country, like Spain. So she confided in him that she wanted to marry Charles and, as she expected, Francis promised to help. Far better for France that Mary marry some (generally unimportant) English lord than one of its enemies. When Charles arrived in Paris, he was summoned to a private meeting with Francis, who assured him of his support. Charles was probably bewildered already, but he was in for more surprises. Next, he was sent to meet Mary. And Mary was not playing.

Mary was, like, look I’m gonna make this simple: play your cards right, and you’re in. She would “show how good a lady she was” to him and “would never have none but” him. Charles must have been flabbergasted; a royal princess, widow of a king, beautiful and rich to boot, effectively throwing herself at him. But Mary wasn’t done yet. She told him that she would rather die than marry whoever Henry VIII wanted her to marry, and then promptly burst into tears. It was her secret weapon and it must have been a spectacle indeed, because Charles was later to say that he “never saw a woman so weep”. Still, a promise made to your best mate is a promise, and Charles tried to keep his word. He told Mary that he would marry her if Henry approved. Mary was having none of it. It was either now or never and, oh by the way, if he didn’t marry her immediately, she would not return to England.

What was a poor man to do?

Readers, he married her.

It was done in secret, with only 10 people in attendance, including Francis I. It was also illegal, strictly speaking, since Mary could not marry without her brother’s approval. But Mary knew that it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission. And, to seal the deal, she and Charles immediately consummated their marriage too. Totally for strategic advantage, you understand. And nothing to do with raging hormones or anything.

The real challenge was telling Henry. Mary and Charles worked in tandem. Mary tried to soften up Henry, via letter, by telling him that the French were pressuring her to marry someone of their choice and also that Francis was (sexually) harassing her himself. Charles, for his part, asked Cardinal Wolsey – Henry’s right hand man and an ally of Charles’ – to help break the news to Henry. His letters to Wolsey are pretty funny, all things considered. He wrote that Mary “would not let [him] rest” until he agreed to marry her – keep in mind that Mary was 18 and Charles over 30 at this point – and, finally, “to be plain with you, I have married her heartily and lain with her”. Nice. Very smooth. You can kinda tell who the brain of this operation was, and its name was not Charles.

Henry was, in short, apoplectic upon hearing the news. The cynic in me wonders, however. Surely Henry must have had an inkling that something like this could happen. And, if so, surely he must have had his reasons for letting events take their course.

Either way, it took some doing to calm him down. And a LOT of money. Mary and Charles had to agree to give Henry a good chunk of her dower income, all the jewels she had received from Louis XII as well as 200,000 crowns of Mary’s dowry money (to be returned by Francis I). These were enormous sums. But it had to be done; Charles was technically guilty of treason for marrying Mary without his sovereign’s permission which basically meant his head could be on a chopping block in no time. Mary continued to send placatory letters to Henry – reminding him of his earlier promise to let her marry the man of her choice, assuring him that she had married Charles only so she could be sure to return to England and not, definitely not for any “carnal” or “sensual appetite” (yeah, right). Francis did his part too, sending Henry a letter in support of the marriage.

Finally, and after being sent an especially magnificent diamond by Mary, Henry finally relented. Mary and Charles had a second wedding ceremony in Paris, this time in public, and were allowed to return to London where, a short time later, they had a 3^rd wedding ceremony. The reality is that Henry was too fond of both Mary and Charles to keep them in exile for long. But he’d managed to squeeze a good chunk of money out of them and, more importantly, out of Francis I (whom he utterly detested) so he could make peace with the fact of his sister’s non-illustrious marriage. Francis, for his part, ended up feeling like a chump. He reportedly scribbled across a picture of Mary “plus sale que royne”: more dirty than queenly. Salty!!

But for all her clever maneuvering, it’s not clear how much happiness her second marriage brought Mary. Information is scant, but speculation is possible. Mary spent most of her married life at Charles’ country seat in Suffolk, away from the royal courts. Charles, of course, continued to dance attendance on his bestie, Henry VIII, so I assume that he and Mary were apart a fair bit. It probably also made for some awkwardness once Henry decided to divorce Catherine of Aragon – a family squabble to end all family squabbles. Mary took Catherine’s side; reportedly, she strongly disliked Anne Boleyn. She fell out with Henry for a while, which can only have made life uncomfortable for Charles, stuck in the middle.

I’ve never had the sense that, after the Sturm und Drang of their sensational elopement died down, theirs was a particularly passionate marriage. Mary suffered recurrent bouts of illness and, as I’ve said, Charles was probably away a lot. Who knows, maybe they kept the flame alive via passionate letter writing (shades of Philip V of France and Joan of Burgundy) – though Charles doesn’t strike me as an eloquent writer. They had 2 daughters, Frances and Eleanor, but tragically their son and heir, Henry, died at a young age.

Mary herself died in 1533 at the relatively young age of 37. And then, a few months later, Charles married again. In an ironic parallel to Louis XII decades earlier, Charles was 49 and his bride was 14.

And this brings us to the last woman in this saga:  Katherine Willoughby.

Katherine was an heiress, the daughter of the Baron Willoughby de Eresby and his second wife, Maria de Salinas. Maria was one of Catherine of Aragon’s Spanish ladies-in-waiting and her closest friend. Interestingly, Katherine grew up to be a fierce Protestant – fierce enough to be forced to flee England during Bloody Mary’s reign. When Katherine was 7, her father died; under English law at the time, she became a ward of the king. To complicate matters, her inheritance became embroiled in a dispute with her uncle. And in 1528, Henry VIII sold her wardship to … you’ll never guess …  Charles Brandon.

The sale of wardships was big business in those days. All minor heirs of rich landowners and  nobles were subject to wardship of the king, going back to early feudal times. Wardship entitled the king to all revenues of the deceased’s estate (except the widow’s dower portion) until the heir reached majority – 14 for girls, 21 for boys. The Tudors monetized the hell out of this, selling wardships to the highest bidder (or favoured cronies) to shore up the royal coffers.  The practice was especially egregious for heiresses because, once in the clutches of their guardians, they generally had few means to effect an escape; they could be married off by their guardians in whatever way best suited their guardians’ financial or familial plans. Once you get your hands on a big fortune, you’re not going to be in a rush to let it go, yeah? Charles Brandon certainly wasn’t.

He quickly intervened in Katherine’s inheritance dispute, calling on Cardinal Wolsey to once again back him up. And he moved to secure the bag further by betrothing Katherine to his son and heir. But as early as 1531, there were rumours that Charles had his eye on Katherine for himself. And, sure enough, as soon as Mary Tudor was dead, Charles broke off his son’s betrothal and married Katharine himself. Ostensibly, the reason was that his son was too young to marry immediately and Katharine had reached the age of majority which made it imperative for a marriage to take place pronto lest Katherine and her fortune slip through Charles’ hands. And, sure, that does sound like a plausible pragmatic reason … but one can’t help but suspect other motivations too. Maybe I just have a dirty mind.

I’d like to think that Charles’ move, in marrying a girl young enough to be his daughter a few scant months after his wife’s death, would have caused at least a minor scandal but, honestly, I don’t think it did. It was the sort of thing that happened a lot. Certainly, I haven’t read anything that suggests this caused a cooling off in Charles’ friendship with Henry VIII. And if Mary’s own brother wasn’t scandalized, would anyone else have been?

We don’t know what Katharine herself thought about the prospect of marrying her guardian. Did he appear as “ancient” to her as Louis XII appeared to those who observed his wedding to the young Mary Tudor? We don’t know if Katharine had a back-up plan, like Mary did; not being a princess, her resources and options were probably more limited. And, make no mistake, marriage to the Duke of Suffolk was a ‘good match’ for Katherine, age aside. Historians say that the marriage was a happy one. Allow me to be skeptical. Katherine was known for her wit, sharp tongue, short temper, and devotion to learning – all things she most certainly did not have in common with Charles.

Katherine and Charles managed to survive the ups and downs of Henry VIII’s later marital adventures without losing their heads, unlike other people in Henry’s inner circle (cough Thomas Cromwell cough). Katherine became especially close friends with Henry’s 6^th wife, Catherine Parr, with whom she shared her Protestant beliefs. Their friendship was tested, though, after Charles Brandon died in 1545. It was rumoured that Henry VIII began eyeing Katherine as his 7^th wife when his marriage to Catherine hit a rocky patch thanks to her outspokenness on religious matters. Evidence of this is inconclusive, however, and there is good reason to assume that Katherine’s feistiness would have, in the long run, served her about as well with Henry as Anne Boleyn’s did. Luckily, Catherine Parr knew how to manage Henry and kept her head – literally and figuratively – and her husband. She, and her friendship with Katherine, survived Henry’s last, shambolic years.

Catherine Parr didn’t have much better luck with her next husband, Thomas Seymour, but Katherine did. In 1552/3, she married Richard Bertie, a member of her household – her gentleman-usher, whose ceremonial role was to walk ahead of her in procession, but who also transacted a lot of business on her behalf. We can safely assume it was a love match – wealthy duchesses not being in the habit of marrying servants otherwise. Katherine and Richard also shared religious beliefs, which increasingly became the focus of the latter part of Katherine’s life. She supported the publication of Protestant texts and helped to establish Protestant churches. During the reign of Bloody Mary, Katherine and Richard left England to escape persecution. They wandered pretty far, at one point serving in some governmental capacity in Lithuania on behalf of the King of Poland. After Bloody Mary’s death, they returned to England where Katherine died at the age of 61, having survived 2 husbands and witnessed enough drama to fill several biographies. She was included in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, the preeminent work of Protestant history and martyrology written by English historian John Foxe during the early part of Queen Elizabeth I’s reign.

There are so many interesting parallels – and differences – between the four women we’ve talked about: Mary, Anne, Joan and Katherine. Their marital adventures gave history plenty of scandals to dissect, but they were all so much more than mere pawns in the hands of their families and husbands. They each – in different ways and to different extent – ended up living extraordinary lives for women of their era.

Selected Bibliography

Leanda de Lisle, Tudor – Passion, Manipulation, Murder: The Story of England’s Most Notorious Royal Family

Rozsa Gaston, Anne of Brittany series (fiction)

David Baldwin, Henry VIII's Last Love: The Extraordinary Life of Katherine Willoughby, Lady-in-Waiting to the Tudors