Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [154]
Her religious defiance was matched by a personal infatuation with Philip, her Spanish husband. Her love for him and dependence on her “true father,” the emperor Charles V, was unwavering. Her determination to honor her husband’s will led England into an unpopular war with France and the loss of Calais. There was no fruit of the union, and so at her premature death there was no Catholic heir. Her own phantom pregnancies, together with epidemics and harvest failures across the country, left her undermined and unpopular. Her life, always one of tragic contrast, ended in personal tragedy as Philip abandoned her, never to return, even as his queen lay dying.
In many ways Mary failed as a woman but triumphed as a queen. She ruled with the full measure of royal majesty and achieved much of what she set out to do. She won her rightful throne, married her Spanish prince, and restored the country to Roman Catholicism. The Spanish marriage was a match with the most powerful ruling house in Europe, and the highly favorable marriage treaty ultimately won the support of the English government. She had defeated rebels and preserved the Tudor monarchy. Her Catholicism was not simply conservative but influenced by her humanist education and showed many signs of broad acceptance before she died. She was an intelligent, politically adept, and resolute monarch who proved to be very much her own woman. Thanks to Mary, John Aylmer, in exile in Switzerland, could confidently assert that “it is not in England so dangerous a matter to have a woman ruler, as men take it to be.”12 By securing the throne following Edward’s attempts to bar both his sisters, she ensured that the crown continued along the legal line of Tudor succession. Mary laid down other important precedents that would benefit her sister. Upon her accession as the first queen regnant of England, she redefined royal ritual and law, thereby establishing that a female ruler, married or unmarried, would enjoy identical power and authority to male monarchs. Mary was the Tudor trailblazer, a political pioneer whose reign redefined the English monarchy.
Upon her accession Mary adopted the motto Veritas Temporis Filia—Truth is the Daughter of Time—in celebration of her establishment as England’s Catholic heir and the return of the “true faith.” In 1558, her younger sister wrested the motto from the dead queen, for the Protestant truth. It was not the only thing Elizabeth took from her predecessor. After Mary’s death, the coronation robes of England’s first queen were hastily refurbished—with a new bodice and sleeves—to fit its second.13
In certain things she is singular and without an equal; for not only is she brave and valiant, unlike other timid and spiritless women, but so courageous and resolute, that neither in adversity nor peril did she ever display or commit any act of cowardice or pusillanimity, maintaining always, on the contrary, a wonderful grandeur and dignity … it cannot be denied that she shows herself to have been born of a truly royal lineage.
—THE VENETIAN AMBASSADOR GIOVANNI MICHIELI
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THIS WAS THE BOOK I ALWAYS WANTED TO WRITE. FROM THE earliest days of my doctoral research I was driven by a desire to tell Mary’s remarkable story, to push her to center stage as England’s first queen and bring her out from the shadow of her younger sister, Elizabeth. I hope I have gone some way to achieving this.
In writing this book I have incurred many debts to scholars, writers, librarians, and friends. The staff of Cambridge University Library has been endlessly efficient, helpful, and friendly, as have those of the British Library and the National Archives. I must also thank Henry Bedingfeld for allowing me to view his family records at Oxburgh Hall. Various colleagues have provided help, inspiration, and