La Reine Blanche by Mary Hoffman

The "other" Mary Tudor

No, not England's first  Queen Regnant but Henry the Eighth's favourite sister.

If this new biography had its title translated into The White Queen, readers might think it was fiction, like Philippa Gregory's novel of the same name, about Elizabeth Woodville.

As it is, the subject's life is so extraordinary that Sarah Bryson might well have presented it as fiction. (The subtitle is a bit misleading: it's not just a collection of letters, though these are drawn on.)

I have written about the first Mary Tudor on here before. I am particularly interested in her and her second husband, Charles Brandon, at least partly because one of my sons-in-law is their descendant. I know, I know. It's only two days since Katherine Roberts told us that 1 in 200 men in the world is directly descended from Genghis Khan.

But I look at my son-in-law's hooded eyes and a Plantagenet looks back at me. I have his family tree going back to Frances Brandon and can see back to Henry Vll beyond that. Another ancestor helped that same Henry become king by rallying to his side at the Battle of Bosworth.

Family connections aside, Mary Rose, sister of Henry the Eighth, would be a fascinating subject to anyone. Henry Vll and his wife, Elizabeth of York famously married both to legitimate his rather shaky claim to the throne and to bring an official end to the "Wars of the Roses," or Cousins' War. They had four children who survived infancy: two boys and two girls. The boys were Arthur, who died as a teenager a few months after marrying Katherine of Aragon, and Henry whose marital history is all too often rehearsed.

The older daughter was Margaret, named for her formidable grandmother Margaret Beaufort, and married to James lV of Scotland  (Mary Queen of Scots was her granddaughter). She came between the two sons. The last surviving daughter was Mary Rose, five years younger than the brother who would become king.

This portrait suggests she shared the red-gold hair of her brother and niece Elizabeth. Prized as sons were, the royal couple had two already and no reason to anticipate Arthur's early death so perhaps they were relaxed about the new baby's being a girl. Because royal princesses had their own advantages: they could be married off to other European royals.

Mary had her first marriage proposal when she was three; it was rejected. But then the proposed husband was "only" the son of a Duke. The royal toddler knew nothing about it of course; such matters were sorted out by fathers. Her older sister was to be married to a king and her father intended nothing less for his second daughter.

In fact Mary was first "married" at the age of five to Charles, who would not only go on to be King of Spain but Holy Roman Emperor too. Her father would not have known this for certain at the time of their proxy wedding and indeed Charles - an infant himself - was also "only the son of a duke"  but that dukedom was Burgundy, one of the richest and most influential in Europe.

So Mary Rose could have become Empress but settled for Duchess. But not until she had first been a queen.

Her life was filled with all the little luxuries her brother could give her, especially rich fabrics for clothes. He became king when Mary was only thirteen and seems always to have favoured her, sending her letters and presents whenever she was not at court. And of course Mary had gained a sister-in-in-law, Katherine of Aragon, to whom she became very close.

Her brother became impatient with the way that negotiations for Mary's marriage to Charles, now Prince of Spain, were being dragged out, by Charles's father Ferdinand and grandfather Maximilian, who was Holy Roman Emperor . So Henry started to cast around for another suitable husband for her.

His choice fell on Louis Xll of France, aged 52, who had been married twice before. His first marriage had been annulled and his second ended in the death of his wife, Anne of Brittany, who was worn out by stillbirths and miscarriages both with Louis and her first husband.

Mary was eighteen when this marriage was suggested to her and this is the point when she leaps out of the pages of history and becomes a real woman, just as fearless as her brother. This is when she famously extracts the promise from him that, if she "did marrie for our pleasure at this time ...that you will suffer me to marry as me liketh to do." This is how she puts it in the letter she sends Henry after Louis' death.

And straightaway we can imagine these redheaded siblings facing off and the teenager telling her big brother (who happens to be king of England)  "I'll marry this old guy to please you, but when he dies I get to choose my next husband."

It is inconceivable that she didn't already have her eye on Charles Brandon, lately made Duke of Suffolk, as a candidate for spouse number two. He was a dashing figure at court and the nearest thing Henry had to a best friend. He was very attractive to women and had already been married twice, in slightly scandalous circumstances and was now an eligible 30-year-old widower (albeit betrothed to his ward!).

But if we think that Mary was anything other than a compliant and obliging wife to the man who was over thirty years her senior, Sarah Bryson puts us right. She seems to have behaved in relation to her husband King Louis and his court with exemplary modesty and courtesy. She was equipped with the most gorgeous clothes and jewels - a sop to her vanity from her brother to sugar the pill of marrying this much older man?

Whatever their marriage was like, it lasted only three monhs and then Louis was dead. It was at this time that Mary was dubbed "La Reine Blanche."

I imagine the calumny that Louis died because of over-exerting himself in the bedchamber with his teenage bride started almost immediately. He was more likely to have fallen victim to the gout that plagued him. But whatever the cause of his death, it seems clear that Louis doted on his young wife and treated her with great favour and kindness.

Mary had got off lightly. A wonderful trousseau, loads of bling and only three months of having to submit to an old man's embraces. But now she had to extricate herself from France. And who was sent to bring her home? Why, none other than Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk.

Henry must have known what a risk he was taking in sending his glamorous friend. He even extracted a promise from Brandon that he would not marry Mary without the king's permission. And such permission would not have been forthcoming, since Mary was now back on the marriage market, still young and beautiful and with the added advantage now of having been a queen. And Charles was of a far inferior social rank.

But Mary was no longer a pliant child or even a bargaining teenager; she took matters into her own hands and proposed to Brandon herself! Within days of his arrival in France they were married.

To marry in secret, without the king's permission, was very dangerous but Henry was caught in a trap. This was his beloved younger sister and his best friend. Although he was furious and stung them with a huge fine, of course he took them back into his confidence and favour.

It took a lot of hard work for the errant couple to regain Henry's trust . There were letters full of flattery, there were tears and protestations, self-abasement and promises for the future. And a whopping great diamond, known as The Mirror of Naples, given to Mary by Louis on their marriage and now offered to the English king.

They returned to England together 503 years ago, almost to the day, on 2nd May 1515. Mary had to hand over all her returned dowry to her brother but she must have thought her new husband worth the financial sacrifice.

They lived mainly at Suffolk Place. Mary was the second-highest ranking lady in England after her sister-in-law, Queen Katherine, and by February 1516, Charles Brandon was restored to all his roles at court. Katherine gave birth to a daughter in February 1516, after Mary's unsanctioned marriage, and the child was named after her aunt. This little girl became the woman the world knows as Mary Tudor.

Just under a month later Mary and Brandon had their first child, a boy, whom they named Henry. By such reciprocal gestures was the reconciliation sealed. Their second child, Frances, was born in the following year. Another daughter, Eleanor, was born in 1519.

In 1520, Mary, still only 24, twice-married and mother to two children, attended with her husband the fabulous Anglo-French encounter known as the Field of Cloth of Gold. But  before that, she met for the first time the man who had been her  fiancé, now King Charkles V of Spain. It makes her seem a woman we can recognise when Sarah Bryson tells us she ordered a whole new wardrobe for this occasion.

In France, Brandon was the star of the jousts and how Mary must have rejoiced at his prowess. Here she was, a Dowager Queen, married to the man of her choosing, sister of a king and dressed and bejewelled in splendour while her handsome, athletic husband shone in the lists. In the five years since she had last been in the country her life had changed much for the better.

But then two years later Mary and Charles's son Henry died. And the next decade showed a decline in her happiness. Another son, also called Henry, was born but lived until only eleven years of age.

By 1527 Henry was trying to get an annulment of his marriage to Katherine and was focused on marrying Anne Boleyn and fathering a legitimate male heir. Until such time as he had one, little Henry Brandon, Earl of Lincoln  was a candidate for the English throne.

Mary was horrified. Not at the thought of her son losing his place in line to the throne but because Katherine was genuinely her friend and she thought her brother's behaviour reprehensible. She developed a hearty dislike for Anne Boleyn, whom she had known in France.

And how painful it must have been for Mary that her brother enlisted her husband to take messages to to the stricken queen, telling her of her fate. In 1533, shortly after Anne's coronation, Mary died. She was only 37 years old.

Her little son died the following year but by then Charles Brandon had re-married. Three months after Mary's death he married his 14-year-old ward (no not the one he was engaged to before he married Mary). Catherine Willoughby, a great heiress, had been picked out to be little Henry's bride but Charles decided he would be the more suitable husband, especially because he was greatly in need of money.

Sarah Bryson makes it clear that, although it was a love match, Charles and Mary had their burdens to bear. With the return of her dowry to Henry and the huge fines they had to pay the king because of their unauthorised marriage, the couple was always strapped for cash. They had to keep up the most lavish of appearances at court and Brandon often had to seek loans.

They lost both of their sons (albeit the second after Mary's death), Mary missed a good friend in Katherine of Aragon and she herself suffered many episodes of an unspecified illness throughout her life. She retained the title Queen of France for the rest of her days and was clearly proud of it. But for eighteen years she was married to a man whom, for all his faults, she clearly loved.

The daughter, wife and sister of kings and grandmother of the queen with the shortest reign in English history, the first Mary Tudor has at last found a worthy biographer in Sarah Bryson, who has done her subject a great service in this vivid and absorbing book.

Sarah Bryson

(All photos public domain)

Children of the King by Lynne Benton

Recently I read a fascinating book called “Bringing them up Royal”, about the relationships of royal children with their parents, from 1066 to the present day.  

After a great deal of deliberation I decided to talk about the three royal children of one notorious king.

Henry VIII would never have won any prizes as a husband, as we know only too well.  But what is also painfully clear is that this incredibly narcissistic king was an equally bad parent.

Henry VIII

When his daughter Mary was born to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, he was delighted with the little girl, fully confident that many more children, especially boys, would follow.  Sadly, when Catherine failed to produce the desired son – all her subsequent babies either miscarried or were stillborn – Henry decided it must be Catherine's fault, and that their marriage was cursed because she had been his dead brother’s fiancée.  He convinced himself that what was best for him was best for the country too, so as is widely known he decided to divorce Catherine, something which was forbidden by the Roman Catholic Church, to which they both belonged at the time.  The Pope refused to give his consent to the divorce, so, unprepared to be thwarted, Henry decided to break away from the Roman Catholic church and form his own, Protestant religion, the Church of England, thus setting in train many years of division and retribution among his people which in many places still resonates today.

At this time Mary was ten years old, and fond of both her parents, so she was very confused and upset by their split, though she felt her mother was the innocent party.  She also believed, as she’d been brought up to believe, that the Roman Catholic Church was right, and divorce was wrong.  But Henry continued to court Anne Boleyn, banished Catherine from court while showering Anne Boleyn with favours, and refused to see his daughter.  

Mary Tudor

In 1533, he finally got his own way, divorcing Catherine and marrying Anne, and shortly afterwards Anne’s daughter Elizabeth was born.  Then things became even worse for Mary, now aged 15.  Two days after Elizabeth's birth, Henry announced that Mary was no longer a princess, but simply Lady Mary, and he also refused to let her see her mother at all.  Then he sacked all her ladies-in-waiting and announced that Mary was to be merely lady-in-waiting to Princess Elizabeth.  Anne didn’t help, either – she persuaded Henry to confiscate most of Mary’s jewels.  Shortly after this Henry announced that Elizabeth, not Mary, was to be his heir.  So effectively, Henry divorced not only his wife but his older daughter too.  One can only imagine how this affected the teenage Mary, and her feelings about her baby sister.

Elizabeth, aged 13

At first Mary denied her father, but from time to time she attempted a reconciliation with him, but to no avail.  He wanted nothing more to do with her.

Of course, it wasn’t long before Anne Boleyn fell out of favour too.  When she too failed to produce a male heir Henry’s eye began to wander again, and soon fell on one of Anne’s other ladies-in-waiting, Jane Seymour.  Happy to listen to his sycophants’ tales of Anne’s supposed infidelity, he had Anne beheaded in the Tower of London when Elizabeth was only two years old, and married Jane.

Now Elizabeth was an outcast too, and Henry totally ignored her.  Nobody knows whether he even told her why he’d had her mother executed.  To her credit, Jane Seymour was a good stepmother and did her best to bring Henry and his daughters closer together, and when her son, the future Edward VI, was born, both Mary and Elizabeth were allowed to play important parts at his christening.

Unfortunately Jane died twelve days after Edward’s birth, but by then Mary was back in favour with her father.  Henry decided she should have the honour of being chief mourner (though she had been forbidden to attend her own mother’s funeral), and granted her a household and a lady-in-waiting of her own.  Meanwhile Elizabeth and her baby brother were sent to Hatfield Palace, in the care of Elizabeth’s governess, under whose care the two small children became friends.

After Henry’s fourth marriage, to Anne of Cleves, and speedy divorce, he became infatuated with the teenage Catherine Howard, who was ten years younger than Mary, which must have been very difficult for both his daughters.  However, Catherine soon proved, or was reputed to be, unfaithful to him, so he had her executed too.  This may have reminded him of the execution of his second wife, Anne Boleyn, because he took out his misery on the nine-year-old Elizabeth and exiled her from court.  By now Elizabeth was clever enough to realise that if she was down, her half-sister was up, as once more Mary was given an honoured place at court.  They both knew that not only their status but also their lives were at the irrational whim of their spiteful, petulant father.

Finally, in 1543, Henry made a sensible marriage, to Katherine Parr, who became a good stepmother and carried on Jane Seymour’s good work of trying to mend Henry’s relationship with his children.  She got on particularly well with Elizabeth, and quickly persuaded Henry to allow his younger daughter back to court.  Then, having no children of her own, she also persuaded him to revoke his earlier decisions and restore both Mary and Elizabeth to the line of succession, after their brother Edward VI. 

Edward VI

All three of Henry’s children subsequently ruled the country, but thanks to Henry the reigns of both Edward, a staunch Protestant like his father who insisted on punishing Catholics, and Mary, a staunch Catholic like her mother, who insisted on punishing Protestants, were fraught with intrigue, fear and bloodshed.  It was only when Elizabeth came to the throne that things began to calm down a little, though it took a while for everyone to come to terms with the new regime.  Considering the difficult childhood she’d had it is perhaps surprising that she coped so well in her adult life, but she was intelligent and pragmatic enough to realise that some degree of religious tolerance would benefit her people.   A useful lesson indeed.

November competition

To win a copy of The King's Pearl by Melita Thomas, just answer the question below in the comments section. Then copy your answer in an email to maryhoffman@maryhoffman.co.uk

"Her father Henry wanted Mary to swear an oath recognising him as Head of the Church in England and admitting that his marriage to Mary's mother, Katharine, had been invalid. What would you have advised her to do?"

Closing date 7th December

We are sorry our competitions are open to UK Followers only

Good luck!

Mary and the influence of Isabella of Castle by Melita Thomas

Photo by AW Images

Our November guest is Melita Thomas


Melita Thomas is the co-founder and editor of Tudor Times, a repository of information about Tudors and Stewarts in the period 1485-1625.

Melita has loved history since being mesmerised by the BBC productions of ‘The Six Wives of Henry VIII’ and ‘Elizabeth R’, when she was a little girl. After that, she read everything she could get her hands on about this most fascinating of dynasties. Captivated by the story of the Lady Mary galloping to Framlingham to set up her standard and fight for her rights, Melita began her first book about the queen when she was 9. The manuscript is probably still in the attic!

Whilst still pursuing a career in business, Melita took a course on writing biography, which led her and her business partner, Deborah Roil, to the idea for Tudor Times, and gave her the inspiration to begin writing about Mary again. The King’s Pearl: Henry VIII and his daughter Mary is her first book.

In her spare time, Melita enjoys long distance walking. She is attempting to walk around the whole coast of Britain, and you can follow her progress here.

Welcome Melita! Your book is a great read.

Mary and the influence of Isabella of Castile.

It is a truism that women could not (or should not) rule in Europe during the middle-ages and Renaissance period, but the theory and the lived reality were two very different things. The second half of the fifteenth century, and the sixteenth century was an age of female rulers.

Generally, female rule was not absolute – they were regents, governors, dowagers and queens-mother, whose effective dominance was hidden behind the cloak of acting on behalf of fathers, brothers or under-age sons – but one woman, Isabella, sovereign Queen of Castile, probably wielded more power and influence across Europe than any woman until the empresses of the eighteenth century.

As a young woman of seventeen, Isabella was willing to wage war against her half-brother to have her claim to succeed him recognised, and on his death, when she was twenty-three, she raised troops and led an armed force to seize the throne, not waiting for her husband to take the initiative on her behalf. Isabella’s driving personality, and the mutually beneficial partnership that she and her husband, Ferdinand, King of Aragon, established, led to the emergence of Spain as one of the great powers of Europe, and the dominant force in the European colonisation of the New World. Isabella’s vision of herself was as a Crusader. Whilst crusading in the Holy Land was something that most European rulers talked about, but failed to do, Ferdinand and Isabella saw themselves on the front line – their duty was to reclaim Christian Spain from the remaining Moorish kingdoms, and to ensure purity of religion at home by rooting out heresy, and Judaism.

Isabella had four daughters, two became queens-consort of Portugal, one succeeded her (much less successfully) as Queen of Castile, and the youngest, Katharine, became queen-consort of England. Katharine left her homeland at the age of fifteen, but records of her childhood, and her surviving correspondence, suggest that she was emotionally close to her mother. Isabella, in an early example of a woman holding down a high-powered and demanding job, whilst maintaining her maternal role, took her children with her everywhere, even close to the front-line of battle, and was closely concerned in their education. It is no stretch of imagination to suppose that her youngest daughter imbibed from her mother the knowledge that a woman could be a powerful and effective monarch, even if she were married, and that her supreme duty was to God.

This belief in a woman’s duty to be a crusader, to protect her faith, and to fight for her rights were amply illustrated by Katharine’s refusal to accept her husband, Henry VIII’s plan to set her aside, because they had only one daughter, and no male heir. That Katharine was seen as a fearsome opponent is illustrated by Henry’s concern that Katharine would raise an army against him and ‘wage war as fiercely as ever her mother had done’, and by her nephew, the Emperor Charles V, telling the English ambassador, only partly in jest, that his sole fear was that ‘(Katharine) would ally with French and defeat him’.

This was the heritage of Katharine’s daughter, Mary. It was not the custom in the sixteenth century for royal children to live with their parents full time – Isabella had been exceptional in that regard - so Mary was housed separately, but she visited her parents for weeks and even months at a time and all the available evidence indicates that both of Mary’s parents were devoted to her. Naturally, of course, she would have been included in the daily activities of her mother, rather than her father and, whilst there is no evidence about what Katharine told Mary about her grandmother, it is not unreasonable to believe Mary heard the story of Isabella’s victories and the final surrender of the Kingdom of Granada to her, an event Katharine herself had witnessed in 1492.

In 1525, Henry, despairing of a male heir, began to consider the possibility that Mary might succeed him. He sent her to the Marches of Wales to preside over the Council. Although not formally created Princess of Wales, she was called by the title, and very quickly accustomed herself to being treated as such, with the implication that the position held of being the king’s heir.

The single extant letter from Katharine to Mary dating from this period, refers only to their mutual health, and the queen’s hopes that Mary will improve her Latin, and occasionally send copies of her Latin exercises for the queen to see. It says nothing about Mary’s role, or what the future might hold for her, but surely Katharine had told her about Isabella’s success, not just on the battle-field, but also in reinforcing crown authority, increasing trade and improving access to justice - thus creating a role-model for Mary.

Eight years later, in 1533, Mary was informed that she was no longer to be termed Princess of Wales, nor to consider herself Henry’s heir. She was seventeen, the very age at which Isabella had insisted on her right to the Castilian throne, in preference to her half-brother’s daughter, whom most people thought was not his own child. The similarity of cases – the ‘true-born’ heir as Mary saw herself, versus the illegitimate (again in Mary’s view) Elizabeth, corresponds with that of Isabella and her supposed niece, Juana ‘La Beltraneja’, and it is impossible that Mary was unaware of the parallel.

Isabella was not physically within the control of her half-brother, enabling her to take up arms to drive out La Beltraneja on her half-brother’s death, whilst Mary was isolated and powerless, stripped of even her household servants, but she continued to vehemently defend her position. Like Isabella, Mary had many supporters, and had Henry died without a legitimate son, Mary would undoubtedly have fought for the throne against any attempt to proclaim Elizabeth. As it was, Henry lived until 1547, and was succeeded by Mary’s half-brother. But on his death, in 1553, when an attempt was made to ignore her claim to the throne, Mary showed herself the true descendant of a warrior queen.

Without hesitation, she called on her supporters and raised an army, preparing to fight to for her rights and her religion – just as Isabella had done. Late in her own reign, when there was war with France, Mary even talked of taking the field herself - surely, her courage, determination and martial spirit must have owed something to the example of Isabella.

The first Mary Tudor by Mary Hoffman

Mary Tudor by an unknown French artist

There are many obscure figures in British history, often women, who have been treated only by novelists (see Anne Rooney's post on Filling the Cracks with Gold a couple of days ago).

In recent years historians, mainly women historians like Helen Castor, Sarah Gristwood and Leanda de Lisle, have done a splendid job of bringing into the foreground subjects from Matilda to the Grey sisters, Jane, Katherine and Mary.

But there is one person whose life story still deserves more attention - Henry the Eighth's younger sister Mary Rose.

Henry was very fond of her and named his first daughter after her, who went on to become the much more famous Mary Tudor, the first Queen Regnant of England. Indeed an Internet search for Mary Tudor will take a long time before it reaches the woman above, reputed by contemporaries to be the most beautiful woman in the land. The unknown artist of the portrait above has captured something of this with the red gold hair that was characteristic of her brother too.

We know far more about Henry's other sister Margaret Tudor, who married James lV of Scotland and became grandmother (twice over!) to the most famous Mary of all, the Queen of Scots.

But this Mary was, like her older sister, a useful piece in the game of royal marriages, a dynastic pawn that could be made a queen. And she was, at the age of eighteen.

A sketch of Mary during the brief period when she was Queen of France (now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Her husband was Louis the Twelfth of France, a man more than thirty years older than Mary and one desperate to sire an heir (yes, that motif again.) Legend has it that he tried so hard in their bedchamber that it caused his death three months later, but to no avail.

We don't know anything about their relationship, except what can be inferred from what happened next, but it does seem likely that it was a relief to Mary to be widowed so swiftly.

However, Louis had not been Henry's first choice for an advantageous marriage for his nubile sister. She had been betrothed at the age of about thirteen to Charles of Castille, who was Katherine of Aragon's nephew and later became the Holy Roman Emperor, which certainly trumps a French king. But Henry tired of delays in the negotiations and called it off in 1513. We don't know how Mary felt about that either but Charles was four years younger than her and, from his portraits as an adult, had inherited the undershot Habsburg jaw. (His personal disadvantages didn't stop him having six children by his eventual wife and at least four illegitimate ones, but that's another story.)

The newly free Mary soon turned her mind to her next husband. Even during the marriage negotiations with Louis, she had written to her brother, saying that "if she survived him, she should marry whom she liked." And "whom she liked" was Charles Brandon, the first Duke of Suffolk. In fact Heny was quite aware of the couple's mutual attraction and had discussed a possible marriage with Brandon, who was a very close friend, only stipulating that they should wait to return from France before Brandon proposed to Mary.

Brandon was dispatched to bring Mary home - somewhat unwisely considering Henry's reservation - but the young woman who was strong-minded enough to tell the king her brother that she would marry an old man to please him only if she could choose her next husband soon swept aside the restriction and married Charles Brandon in secret some time in February 1515, a matter of weeks after King Louis' death.

Mary Tudor and her second husband Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk,

 by Jan Mabuse

Henry was furious and imposed an enormous fine on the couple, which in terms of today's values ran to millions of pounds. In even entertaining a possibility of their union, he probably thought he had already extended favour beyond the bounds due to Suffolk. There is no doubt that Suffolk was one of Henry's nearest intimates, as described in a new biography (the first) by Steven Gunn, Charles Brandon: Henry Vlll's Closest Friend (Amberley.)

But allowing him to marry his sister would put her outside the useful dynastic marriage market and Henry was perhaps not ready to let such prospects go for a royal princess and former queen of not yet twenty.

However, his affection for both of them and the intervention of Cardinal Wolsey caused Henry soon to calm down and he was present at their official marriage in May; he even reduced the fine, though he didn't remove it altogether. Brandon had technically committed High Treason by marrying a royal princess without the monarch's consent and Henry needed to let him know who was boss.

Mary's story is full of "what if?"s - the cracks that a historical novelist longs to fill with gold. What if she had married Charles Castille and become his Empress? What if Louis hadn't so conveniently died and she had borne him an heir? Would Brandon have waited for her?

His own matrimonial history was quite chequered, as Gunn's book shows. He was first contracted to marry Anne Browne, a waiting woman of Queen Katherine, and got her pregnant. But then he broke off the contract to marry Anne's aunt! Dame Margaret Mortimer was twenty years older than Brandon and very wealthy.

Soon after their marriage Brandon had it annulled on grounds on consanguinity but not before he had claimed some of Dame Margaret's dowry. He then married Anne, first secretly and then publicly after pressure from her family, and she bore him a second, legitimate daughter but died soon afterwards in 1510. Nor is that the end of his marital shenanigans as he then became contracted to Lady Elizabeth Lisle, who was his eight year old ward.

But there were rumours that he would marry Margaret of Austria, who certainly liked him. These rumours seem to have been started by Henry himself and soon a book was opened in London betting on their marriage. This was an emabarrassment both to Margaret and Henry, who realised he had gone too far, and Brandon wouldn't scotch the gossip by carrying out the marriage with his ward (which would have been legal.)

What made this man such an irresistible marriage prospect that at least three women were prepared  to marry him, some of them under pressure not to? (He later had three illegitimate children too, by mother or mothers unknown). Charles Brandon is supposed to have been very handsome though there is no portrait evidence of that, very athletic and vigorous, a champion in the lists.

But he was always short of money, not always successful in the many military engagements Henry sent him on and clearly not a faithful lover.

The biggest "what if?" of all in Mary Tudor's history is what would have happened if she had not died in 1533. She bore Charles Brandon four children, two sons and two daughters. The first, Henry, died at eleven.

The second son, born after his brother's death, was also called Henry in an apparently relentless quest to flatter and appease the king, but he too died before he reached manhood. But either of these Henrys would have been strong candidates for the succession after the death of Edward the Sixth, as legitimate nephews of Henry.

Henry Brandon Earl of Lincoln, Mary's second son

The first daughter of Mary and Charles Brandon, Frances, married the Earl of Dorset and became the mother of Lady Jane Grey and her two younger sisters, leading to the tragic short reign and execution of Jane, who was nominated as Edward's heir.

But Mary did die in 1533 and Charles, being Charles, within three months married his fourteen-year-old ward Catherine Willoughby. She was betrothed to young Henry, Charles's son but he was considered too young to marry and Charles didn't want to lose her lands.

Their two sons (another Henry and a Charles) died within hours of each other in 1551, of the sweating sickness. Since Charles had died in 1545, both boys became Dukes of Suffolk, though the younger enjoyed the title for only an hour or so.

So the Duchy of Suffolk, having no legitimate male heirs to the title, went to the husband of Frances, Mary and Charles's older daughter.

Mary Tudor, Duchess of Suffolk, in the National Portrait Gallery

It was not uncommon for women in the first half of the sixteenth century to die before they were forty and being royal was no protection. The second Mary Tudor was forty-two and she had not had any actual pregnancies to weaken her.

The first Mary Tudor had a close relationship with Katherine of Aragon and fell out with Henry over his divorce. And she took against Anne Boleyn, who had been a waiting woman in her retinue when she went to France to marry Louis.

What little we know of her shows the first Mary Tudor to be strong-minded and independent and deserving of more of our attention than she has had to date.


(All images are in the public domain)

THE TUDOR WOMEN'S POWER LIST – Elizabeth Fremantle

In the wake of the Radio 4 Woman's Hour power list for 2015 let's forget Nicola Sturgeon and Caitlyn Jenner for a moment to consider the female movers and shakers of the Tudor age.

The second half of the sixteenth century was uniquely characterised by a half-century of female rule and it was also a period when noble women were educated to an unprecedented level. So as the primary preoccupation of my Tudor trilogy is the theme of women and power, I have compiled a Tudor Women's Power List power list to rival that of Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, featuring many of the women I have written about and some I have not.

1. ELIZABETH TUDOR

Still considered one of England’s greatest monarchs, history has perhaps glossed over some of the failures of Elizabeth I’s 44 year reign, choosing instead to focus on the triumphs. The defeat of the Spanish Armada was one such victory, indeed because the Catholic world deemed the Protestant Elizabeth a heretic, her reign was characterised by England’s successful defence against a perpetual and very real Spanish threat.

The period saw a great flourishing of culture supported by the Queen, in particular the rise of English drama with playwrights like Shakespeare and her encouragement of the exploration of the New World by figures such as Frances Drake, all helping to establish the English cultural identity that persists to this day.

Unlike her sister Mary, Elizabeth understood the mechanics of power for a woman on the throne and that her potential for marriage allowed her to play one foreign state off against another. To commit herself in marriage, she realised, would mean a compromise of that power, so she remained single at great personal cost and without the ability to produce an heir to continue the hard-won Tudor line.

Elizabeth features prominently in all three of my Tudor novels.


2. MARGARET BEAUFORT

The Tudors would have remained a family of ordinary nobles were it not for the indomitable Margaret Beaufort. As the mother of Henry Tudor (Henry VII), an upstart king, with a tenuous claim to the throne, who won his crown on the battlefield, she understood the importance of establishing the Tudor dynasty as a force to be reckoned with.

A mother and widow by the age of twelve, Margaret Beaufort managed to place herself, through marriage, into a position from which she could pull the strings to eventually see her son crowned. The English throne had been contested for decades, passing between the houses of York and Lancaster in an endless bloody struggle and it was Margaret who managed to broker a marriage between the Lancastrian Henry and Elizabeth of York, thereby uniting the warring houses.

Once Henry VII was on the throne she ran the royal household with a rod of iron, setting down codes of behaviour and helping negotiate illustrious and powerful marriages for her royal grandchildren to create alliances across Europe: the eldest Arthur to Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon; Margaret to James IV of Scotland; Mary to Louis XII of France and we all know what became of younger brother Henry.


3. MARY TUDOR

The eldest daughter of Henry VIII with his first wife Catherine of Aragon is remembered as Bloody Mary. This is somewhat unfair as, though it is true 280 people were burned for heresy in her four-year reign, many other monarchs of the period were responsible for equally brutal punishment regimes, indeed her younger sister Elizabeth ordered the execution of no less than 600 in the aftermath of a Catholic uprising in the north of England alone.

Mary’s route to the throne was not straightforward and she was compelled to raise an army to overthrow her young cousin Lady Jane Grey, who had been named as her brother Edward VI’s successor. Staunchly papist, Mary dragged England back to Catholicism kicking and screaming, re-establishing papal power and marrying her cousin Philip of Spain. Unfortunately this marriage was the source of much anxiety as the English worried about becoming an annex of Spain. An uprising ensued but Mary stood her ground and quelled the rebels gaining the respect of her people.

But Mary’s Spanish marriage caused England to join in Spain’s European war, which ultimately led to the loss of Calais (the last English territory on the continent) and her lack of an heir meant that when she died she had no choice but to pass the crown to her popular Protestant sister, thwarting her hopes of a Catholic England.

Mary Tudor and her reign are explored in Sisters of Treason.


4. CATHERINE OF ARAGON

Catherine of Aragon is remembered primarily for the humiliation of her divorce from Henry VIII in favour of Anne Boleyn and miserable end in a damp castle separated from those she loved. But that is a mere fragment of her story. As Henry’s queen for more than twenty years, and with her illustrious family ruling over most of Europe, she was the most powerful woman in England, prompting Thomas Cromwell to say of her ‘if not for her sex, she could have defied all the heroes of history,’ and this from an enemy.

She promoted education for women and relief for the poor and during Henry’s French campaign she was made Regent of England, raising an army to fight the invading Scots, who thought with the King away they would find an easy victory in England. This was not to be, James IV was killed at Flodden Field and the pregnant Catherine, who had ridden north in armour to encourage her troops, sent a piece of the Scottish King’s bloody coat to her husband in France to mark her triumph.


5. KATHERINE PARR

Katherine Parr is not an obvious choice for the Tudor power list as she is remembered as the wife who managed to survive marriage to Henry VIII by being meek, uncontroversial and managing to outlive him.

This was far from the case: Katherine used her position as queen to forward her reformist political agenda in a volatile, polarised court. Her Catholic enemies tried to bring her down but failed miserably as she managed to stay a step ahead of them causing them to topple in her stead. At a time when women were supposed to be seen and not heard, she was one of the first women to publish in the English language, penning two widely read books, one a highly dangerous political text that might have seen her follow her predecessors to the block.

Like Catherine of Aragon, Katherine Parr was the only other of Henry’s queens to hold the position of Regent of England, while Henry was campaigning in France, a role she performed with aplomb, managing the politically divided council and ensuring the safety of the realm. It was Katherine who encouraged Henry to reinstate his outcast daughters to the succession, thus playing an important role in the eventual half-century of female rule in England, and played a pivotal role in the education of the young Elizabeth Tudor.

Katherine Parr is the focus of Queen’s Gambit.


6. BESS OF HARDWICK

Bess of Hardwick is the only woman on the Tudor power list without a direct connection by blood or marriage to the monarchy, but as an ordinary woman born into a family of minor gentry who eventually became the Countess of Shrewsbury, amassed great wealth and land and oversaw the building of some of the great Elizabethan houses such as Chatsworth and Hardwick Hall, she deserves a mention.

Some might dismiss Bess as a canny gold-digger but this is far from the case. In the period as a woman if you didn’t manage to elevate your family through marriage you were deemed a failure, so Bess’s marital mountaineering was more about clever negotiation than seductive pulchritude. Her final marriage contract with George Talbot the Earl of Shrewsbury, one of the primary nobles in the land, was cleverly constructed to include the marriage of her son and daughter, from an earlier union, to Shrewsbury’s son and daughter, meaning that her children and their progeny would also become part of the illustrious Talbot line.

Shrewsbury managed his money badly and lost a fortune as Elizabeth’s jailor to Mary Queen of Scots, who he was impelled to house, with her vast queen’s entourage, for nearly twenty years. Bess in the meantime shored her fortune up, cultivating powerful friends, building houses and accumulating land in Derbyshire. But her ambitions were greater and she managed to marry one of her daughters to Charles Stuart, the grandson of Margaret Tudor, meaning that the daughter of that union, Arbella Stuart, was a strong contender for the English throne after Elizabeth. Bess’s hopes of becoming the queen’s grandmother were, however, dashed when Elizabeth handed the crown to Arbella’s cousin James VI of Scotland.

Arbella is to be the protagonist of my next novel.

7. PENELOPE DEVEREUX

An less obvious candidate for the power list as she's a little known figure, but as a prominent and well-connected woman who forwarded the ambitions of her family at court, was involved in risky secret espionage with the Scottish Court on the matter of the Stuart succession and lived openly in an adulterous relationship, having several children with her lover, a very bold move for a woman of the period, she deserves her place.

Forced into a deeply unhappy marriage aged eighteen, Penelope became the muse of Sir Philip Sidney, inspiring his sonnet cycle Astrophil and Stella and was highly influential in the Elizabethan cultural world of poets and playwrights. Her refusal to be shamed in her adultery, in which she behaved in a way that was the norm for men of the period but completely taboo for women, marks her out in my mind as a proto-feminist. Also she was listed as one of the perpetrators of her brother The Earl of Essex's rebellion and not only was she the sole woman listed but was the only person not to be tried for her part in it. This points to her having great power and influence behind the scenes.

Penelope Devereux is the heroine of Watch the Lady

Find out more about Elizabeth Fremantle's Tudor trilogy on www.elizabethfremantle.com