(Cover image – © Unknown Artist – The National Portrait Gallery)
Mary Tudor was the youngest surviving child of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. She was known for many things in her life, but today we are commemorating her death on 25 of June, 1533; only a bit less than a month after Anne Boleyn’s coronation.
Mary probably was one of the reasons why Henry VIII’s first daughter was named Mary but that’s not the only thing they were bound to have in common. Both ladies were said to be beautiful and talented, both suffered the King’s ire and been vanished from court, both loathed Anne Boleyn and, sadly, both shared frequent bouts of illness all throughout their lives. Those illnesses became even more habitual once she came back to England.
Poor Mary had gotten the bad side of the peace treaty that Wolsey signed with France in 1514, being sent off at 18 years old to marry the 52-year-old French King Louis XII. Louis was desperate to have an heir and he died not long after the wedding trying to conceive a royal baby. Francis I succeeded his first cousin once removed and father-in-law Louis XII and tried to marry Mary within the French court but it didn’t work out even after sending two friars to try to scare her off of marrying Charles Brandon. Literally, everybody knew where her heart seemed to be.
You see, legend states that Dowager French Queen Mary Tudor had left England already in love with another man, being deeply unhappy to have to marry Louis (because marrying a man that could be older than your grandad and leaving your whole family behind weren’t reasons enough to be unhappy, I guess). Little Mary had fallen deep in Cupid’s powers on the hands of her brother’s best friend: Charles Brandon. Yep. Sounds like a romantic TikTok book trope.
But obviously, Henry wouldn’t allow that to ever happen… or would he?
Incredibly sharp Mary managed to get a promise out of Henry’s lips before parting ways. She asked for freedom to choose her next marriage once her first husband passed away, hoping age would help her out and release her from such a burden soon enough. And so it did.
Henry VIII, who must’ve been either a narcissistic man that couldn’t fathom anyone contradicting him or an amazingly blind older brother, sent none other than Charles Brandon on the delicate mission to get Mary back. Truth be told, he ordered him not to propose to his youngest pearl of a sister, but common now, let’s be real for a moment here. He had to be aware of the dangers he was dancing with.
The fact is that Mary had been rumoured to marry various men: Antoine, Duke of Lorraine, Charles III, Duke of Savoy and even Francis I himself after becoming a widower too, but Mary chose Charles Brandon. And when I say that she chose him, I mean it. It is said that she relentlessly pursued him until he finally complied (poor Charles, marrying a stunning woman who happened to be a wealthy royal), him writing later that he “never saw a woman so weep”. They married secretly at the Hotel de Clugny in Paris on 3 March 1515 in front of only 10 people, including Francis.
Now, what made the pair tie the knot so abruptly and secretly is up for debate: some call it love, some say it was expected as she was a renowned beauty and he was an English Casanova and some believe it was Mary’s desperate move to avoid another French marriage and be able to return home safely and forever. The truth won’t ever be known, we can only speculate.
What’s sure for us now and was clear for them then is that marrying without the King’s consent was no small deed. The pair consummated the marriage so that it couldn’t be dissolved, and doing that marked Charles as a traitor (marrying a member of the royal family without the King’s blessing was a no-no). Since traitors were severely punished with death, Mary wrote a pleading letter to her brother confessing everything and hoped for the best. It took lots of letters, lots of self-degrading comments and lots of working hours to Wolsey and everyone else involved to patch things over.
Family peace was celebrated with a public second wedding for the two lovebirds and with some monetary compensation for the hurting King: Mary had to give back her dowry, her jewels and plate, as well as paying a £24,000 fee. Brandon was ordered to give up his wardship of Lady Lisle, to whom he had previously been contracted to marry.
Nonetheless, six years later, the couple had managed to pay only the sum of £1,324, so Henry couldn’t have been that angry at them to let them chill on their debt.
You’d think that the war was over for good ol’ Mary, but alas, life rarely let’s room for calmness. Marrying Charles and becoming the new Duchess of Suffolk did nothing to erase from people’s memory her former title as French Queen, so for the remainder of her life she was referred to and known as Queen of France. Moreover, Mary was no less than the third wife of her second husband, becoming a stepmother to Anne and Mary (yes, another Mary). They added four more children to the family: Henry, Frances (mother to future Queen Jane Grey), Eleanor and Henry (yes, two Henrys), but Mary loved Charles’ previous offspring as much as her own.
The thing with men back then is that they were unfaithful, and Charles was no different, which caused Mary pain and made them fight quite a lot. Also, Mary’s health started to act up. In 1518 Charles wrote to Wolsey that his wife had ague (an illness that caused high fevers and shivering) and in 1520 wrote again stating that Mary was sick and asking for permission to bring her over to London to get treated.
By late 1520’s she was back quarrelling with her brother due to the fact that he was trying to divorce Katherine of Aragon (who Mary had come to befriend) and marry Anne Boleyn to secure an heir to the English throne. They grew distant once again.
Mary breathed her last breath on 25 of June 1533, early morning, in her home at Westhorpe Hall, succumbing to what some historians believe was an angina. Other possibilities discussed are tuberculosis and cancer. There’s always drama lovers that adore the idea of Mary simply passing away engulfed by the pain of watching Katherine of Aragon’s fall from Henry’s grace, but the fact is that not long before leaving this world, she sent him a letter saying that she “will be glad to see the King, as she has been a great while out of his sight, and hopes not to be so long again". Seems to me that blood ran as thick as ever between the siblings.
Her funeral was a big deal, considering she’d been Queen of France and was the English King’s sister, and a French delegation was sent to pay respects to their former Queen. Mary was laid to rest at Bury St Edmunds with her daughter Frances acting as her chief mourner accompanied by her husband and by her brother Henry, Earl of Lincoln. Mary's youngest daughter, Eleanor, and Suffolk's ward, Katherine Willoughby were also present. Do you want to bet on who did Brandon marry next? That’s a story for another day…
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