Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [5]
So when in the spring of 1515 the thirty-one-year-old queen fell pregnant for the seventh time, there was a somewhat subdued response. This pregnancy, however, followed its natural course, and in the early weeks of the New Year the royal couple moved to the royal palace at Greenwich, where Henry had been born twenty-four years before and where preparations were now under way for the queen’s confinement.
The Royal Book, the fifteenth-century book of court etiquette for all such royal events drawn up by Margaret Beaufort, Henry VIII’s grandmother, outlined the necessary arrangements. The queen’s chamber was to be turned into a tapestried cocoon, the floor covered with thickly laid carpet; the walls, ceiling, and windows hung with rich arras and one window left loosely covered to allow in air and light. The wall tapestries, the queen’s canopied bed, and the bed hangings were to be of simple design, with figurative images avoided for fear of provoking dreams that might disturb mother and child. There was to be a cupboard stacked with gold and silver plate to signify the queen’s status, and crucifixes, candlesticks, images, and relics placed on an altar before which she could pray. At the foot of her canopied bed was placed a daybed, covered with a quilt of crimson satin and embroidered with the king and queen’s arms, where the birth would take place.13
In late January, with all made ready, Katherine began the ceremony of “taking her chamber.” First she went to the Chapel Royal to hear Mass; then, returning to the Presence Chamber, she sat beneath her cloth of estate—the mark of her rank—and took wines and spices with members of the court. Lord Mountjoy, her chamberlain, called on everyone to pray that “God would give her the good hour”—safe delivery—and the queen was accompanied to the door of her bedchamber in solemn procession. There the men departed, and Katherine entered the exclusively female world of childbirth. As The Royal Book stipulated, “All the ladies and gentlewomen to go in with her, and no man after to come in to the chamber save women, and women to be inside.”14 She would not be in male company again until her “churching,” the purification after labor, thirty days after the birth. Officers, butlers, and other servants would bring all manner of things to the chamber door, but there the women would receive them.
After days of seclusion and hushed expectancy, the February dawn was broken with bells ringing in the news: the queen had delivered a healthy baby, but a girl. Writing two days later, Sebastian Giustiniani, the Venetian ambassador, assured the doge and Senate that he would offer their congratulations but added that, had the baby been a son, “[he] should have already done so, as in that case, it would not have been fit to delay the compliment.”15 Eventually, the ambassador sought an audience with King Henry and congratulated him “on the birth of his daughter, and on the wellbeing of her most serene mother Queen.” The state would have been “yet more pleased,” he added, “had the child been a son.” Henry remained optimistic. “We are both young,” he insisted; “if it was a daughter this time, by the grace of God, sons will follow.”16
CHAPTER 2
A TRUE FRIENDSHIP AND ALLIANCE
We have this moment received news of the death of the most serene Ferdinand, King of Aragon; and it is supposed this was known some days ago to his Majesty, but kept secret, because of the most serene Queen’s being on the eve of her delivery.1
—GIUSTINIANI TO THE DOGE AND SENATE, FEBRUARY 20, 1516
MARY CAME INTO THE WORLD DURING A SEASON OF MOURNING. Just days