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Counselloresses and Court Politics: Mary Tudor, Queen of France and Female Counsel in European Politics, 1509–15

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Queenship and Counsel in Early Modern Europe

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Abstract

Mary Tudor’s correspondence from her brief first marriage highlights the active political role she sought and began to play in the conduct of Anglo-French politics in the 1510s including counselling Louis XII and his court on dealings with her brother. Her letters also reveal the pivotal role that her own English household—particularly her female attendants—played in supporting her role by providing her with counsel. This chapter explores Mary’s role in Anglo-French diplomacy in the mid-1510s in the context of wider European politics and examines the extent to which Mary had been born and educated for the role of queen consort by her mother, Elizabeth of York, and the examples of her sister, Margaret, Queen of Scots, and sister-in-law, Catherine of Aragon.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    “Comme la pais entre Dieu et les hommes,/ Par le moyen de la Vierge Marie, / Fus jadis faicte, ainsy a present sommes / Bourgoys Francoys, deschargez de nos sommes, / Car Marie avecque nous se marie” Pierre Gringore’s Pageants for the Entry of Mary Tudor into Paris, ed. Charles Read Baskervill (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934), 15. Baskervill transcribed the magnificently illuminated presentation copy given to Mary. See BL, MS Cotton Vespasian B.II.

  2. 2.

    A rich account of these events is given in Jean-Pierre Seqguin, L’information en France de Louise XII à Henri II, Genève, 1961, 11; nos 54–61.

  3. 3.

    There is an interesting parallel between Mary and Louis’ marriage festivities and those that had earlier celebrated the solemnizing of Margaret Tudor’s marriage to James IV. The Somerset herald’s lengthy and elaborate account described the August 1503 wedding festivities at Holyrood, which included masques just as took place for Mary and Louis. Suggestions that Margaret would counsel and advise James IV can be read into the treatment and deference Margaret received from her new husband. Leland, John, De Rebus Britannicis Collectanea, IV, ed. T. Hearne (London, 1770); Sarah Carpenter, “‘TO THEXALTACYION OF NOBLESSE’: A Herald’s Account of the Marriage of Margaret Tudor to James IV,” Medieval English Theatre, Vol. 29 (2007), 104–120. My thanks to Alexandra Johnson for sharing her insights on this topic with me.

  4. 4.

    Erin A. Sadlack, The French Queen’s Letters: Mary Tudor Brandon and the Politics of Marriage in Sixteenth-Century Europe (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 2–3.

  5. 5.

    Thomas Elyot, The Boke Named the Gouernour (London: Thomas Bethelet, 153), 174v.

  6. 6.

    Erin A. Sadlack, “Epistolary Negotiations: Mary the French Queen and the Politics of Letter-Writing,” Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 41, No. 3 (Fall 2010) 691–711, 693.

  7. 7.

    For more on the early years of the Tudor dynasty see, for example, Thomas Penn, The Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England (London: Simon and Schuster, 2013); John Guy, Tudor England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); J. D. Mackie, The Earlier Tudors 1485–1558 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952); J. J. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII (London: Yale University Press, 1997) and David Starkey, Henry: Virtuous Prince (London: Harper Press, 2008). A condition of the marriage was that Henry would execute one of the last surviving male heirs to the former ruling House of York, and so Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick was executed on 28 November 1499 before Catherine set sail from Spain. The delicate terms on which Arthur and Catherine’s marriage was agreed illustrate the relative fragility of the Tudor dynasty and the necessity of Henry’s policy of diplomatic alliance through marriage.

  8. 8.

    Penn, The Winter King, 192; Starkey, Henry, 168 and Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, 7–13.

  9. 9.

    Chapter 3 in this volume. Catherine’s influence on Mary and the close relationship between the two women that began when Mary was just eight years old and continued until her death in 1533 is a fascinating topic, not discussed here for the sake of brevity.

  10. 10.

    John M. Currin, “England’s International Relations 1485–1509: Continuities amidst Change,” 14–43 in Tudor England and its Neighbours, eds. Susan Doran and Glenn Richardson (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 34, 37.

  11. 11.

    Morgan Pierpont Library, Rulers of England Box 02, Henry VIII, no. 33a.

  12. 12.

    “Henry VIII: August 1514, 1–15,” in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 1, 1509–1514, ed. J S Brewer (London, 1920), 1331–47. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/letters-papers-hen8/vol1/pp1331-1347 [accessed 17 July 2017].

  13. 13.

    Hall, Chronicle, 569.

  14. 14.

    Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, 57; Starkey, Henry, 114, 162–3.

  15. 15.

    Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, 37, 50–54, 57; Starkey, Henry, 136–7 and 162–3.

  16. 16.

    For more on this see Chaps. 6 and 7 in this volume.

  17. 17.

    Sadlack, The French Queen’s Letters, 3.

  18. 18.

    Mary’s French correspondence includes her earliest surviving letter written to Margaret of Austria, duchess of Savoy, sometime between 1510 and 1513 when Mary was nominally Princess of Castile and addressed Margaret as “Madame mabonne Tante”. Morgan Pierpont Library, Rulers of England Box 02, Henry VIII, no. 33a. Mary’s first letter to Louis XII was a holograph letter in French, now BL Additional MS 34201, f. 27r from August 1514.

  19. 19.

    Sadlack, “Epistolary Negotiations,” 703.

  20. 20.

    See, for example, Ovid, Heroides ed. Harold Isbell (London: Penguin, 1990).

  21. 21.

    Sadlack, The French Queen’s Letters, 5.

  22. 22.

    Sadlack, “Epistolary Negotiations,” 701–8.

  23. 23.

    Starkey, Henry, 66.

  24. 24.

    Michael K. Jones and Malcolm G. Underwood, The King’s Mother: Lady Margaret Beaufort Countess of Richmond and Derby (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) 91, 106, 178, 202–31; Brenda M. Hosington, “Lady Margaret Beaufort’s Translations as Mirrors of Practical Piety,” 185–204 in English Women, Religion and Textual Production, 1500–1625 ed. Micheline White (London: Ashgate, 2013), 187.

  25. 25.

    Jennifer Summit, “William Caxton, Margaret Beaufort and the Romance of Female Patronage,” in Women, the Book, and the Godly: Selected Proceedings of the St. Hilda’s Conference, 1993, vol. 2, eds. Lesley Janette Smith and Jane H. M. Taylor (London: Boydell and Brewer, 1995), 151.

  26. 26.

    Blake, Caxton’s Own Prose, 57–8 as cited in Summit, “William Caxton, Margaret Beaufort,” 156.

  27. 27.

    Summit, “William Caxton, Margaret Beaufort,” 157–8.

  28. 28.

    D. M. Loades, The Tudor Queens of England (London: A and C Black, 2009), 74–7; Mackie, The Earlier Tudors, 49, 54, 65; Guy, Tudor England, 55, 57, 71 and Starkey, Henry, 32.

  29. 29.

    From the 1460s Margaret had styled herself “Margaret Richmond” in recognition of her second husband, Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond so it is possible that the R continued to denote this earldom, however, R for regina is a far more commonly accepted reading. Guy, Tudor England, 3; Penn, The Winter King, 98–9.

  30. 30.

    Penn, The Winter King, 33, 94–7.

  31. 31.

    Beer, “Between Kings and Emperors,” 12; Walter Cecil Richardson, Mary Tudor: The White Queen (London: Owen, 1970), 81; and Mackie, The Earlier Tudors, 683.

  32. 32.

    TNA SP1/10 ff. 79–80, Mary, Queen of France to Henry VIII, draft in the hand of Brian Tuke, Spring 1515. Erin Sadlack conjectures that Wolsey would have been so invested in the process that he would have sent Tuke to Calais to write under Mary’s direction, returning the draft to Wolsey for editing before preparing a clean copy to be sent to Henry.

  33. 33.

    Ibid.

  34. 34.

    Ibid.

  35. 35.

    Barbara J. Harris, “Power, Profit, and Passion: Mary Tudor, Charles Brandon, and the Arranged Marriage in Early Tudor England,” Feminist Studies, Vol. 15, No. 1, Women Family, and Work (Spring, 1989), 59–88, 60.

  36. 36.

    For more on Wolsey’s policy relating to France see, for example, T. A. Morris, Europe and England in the Sixteenth Century (London: Routledge, 2002), 159–62.

  37. 37.

    Harris, “Power, Profit and Passion,” 60.

  38. 38.

    See, for example, BL MS Cotton Caligula D VI, f. 255r, Mary, Queen of France to Henry VIII, c. Jan/Feb. 1515 and BL MS Cotton Caligula D VI, ff. 253r-254r, Mary, Queen of France to Henry VIII, c. Jan/Feb. 1515.

  39. 39.

    Sadlack, The French Queen’s Letters, 3.

  40. 40.

    Misty Schieberle, Feminized Counsel and the Literature of Advice in England, 1380–1500 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 3–4.

  41. 41.

    According to a search of State Papers Online; http://go.galegroup.com.libproxy.ucl.ac.uk/mss/paginate.do?sort=DA-ASC-SORT&inPS=true&prodId=SPOL&userGroupName=ucl_ttda&tabID=T001&searchId=R1&searchType=BasicSearchForm&currentPosition=16. Margaret of Savoy uses the word “counsel” to describe her own activity to Maximilliam II in 1510 but the context is different and Margaret writes as a fellow ruler.

  42. 42.

    Definition adapted from Schieberle, Feminized Counsel, 9. My thanks to Joanne Paul for sharing her insights on this work. See also the Introduction to this volume (Chap. 1).

  43. 43.

    Mears, Queenship, 50.

  44. 44.

    Schieberle, Feminized Counsel, 5.

  45. 45.

    TNA SP 70/38 f. 219, Thomas Chaloner to Elisabeth Parr, marchioness of Northampton, 20 June 1562; Helen Graham-Matheson (now Matheson-Pollock), “Petticoats and Politics: Female Agency at the Early Elizabethan Court,” in Ladies-in-Waiting: The Politics of the Female Household across Early Modern Europe, eds. Nadine Akkerman and Birgit Houben (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 31–50.

  46. 46.

    Pam Wright began this debate in 1987 with her essay, “A Change in Direction,” in The English Court: from the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War, ed. David Starkey (Longman: London, 1987), 147–72. The subject has since been revisited and variously analyzed in, for example, Judith Barbara Greenbaum Goldsmith, “All the Queen’s women: The Changing Place and Perception of Aristocratic Women in Elizabethan England, 1558–1620” (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 1987); Catherine Howey, “Busy Bodies: Women, Power and Politics at the Court of Elizabeth I, 1558–1603” (PhD diss., The State University of New Jersey, 2007); Natalie Mears, “Politics in the Elizabethan Privy Chamber: Lady Mary Sidney and Kat Ashley,” in Women and Politics in Early Modern England, 1450–1700, ed. James Daybell (Burlington and Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 67–83; Charlotte Merton, “The Women who Served Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth: Ladies, Gentlewomen and Maids of the Privy Chamber, 1553–1603” (PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 1992) and Anna Whitelock, Elizabeth’s Bedfellows: An Intimate History of the Queen’s Court (London: Bloomsbury, 2013) and Graham-Matheson, “Petticoats and Politics,” 31–50.

  47. 47.

    J. M. B. C. Kervyn de Lettenhove, Relations Politiques des Pays Bas et de l’Angleterre, sous le règne de Phillippe II. 11 vols (Brussels, 1888–1900) Vol. IV, MCCC, Guzman de Silva to Margaret, duchess of Parma, 17 July 1564.

  48. 48.

    For further discussion see Joanne Paul, Counsel and Command in Early Modern English Thought, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

  49. 49.

    No. 3356, 1413, Mary, Queen of France to Henry VIII, 12 October 1514, LP, I, 1513–14; a transcription of the severely damaged BL Cotton MS Caligula D VI, f. 257.

  50. 50.

    Ibid.

  51. 51.

    No. 3355, 1413, Mary, Queen of France to Henry VIII, 12 October 1514, LP, I, 1513–14; a transcription of the severely damaged BL Cotton MS Caligula D VI, f. 146.

  52. 52.

    TNA SP 70/38 f. 219, Thomas Chaloner to Elisabeth Parr, marchioness of Northampton, 20 June 1562; Graham-Matheson, “Petticoats and Politics,” 31–50.

  53. 53.

    Catherine Fletcher, Diplomacy in Renaissance Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 92.

  54. 54.

    Ibid., 94, citing Francesco Priscianese, Del governo della corte d’un signore in Roma (Città di Castello: S. Lapi Editore, 1883), 69.

  55. 55.

    The use of the word “cocoon” here alludes Pam Wright, “A Change in Direction,” 167, and to the scholarly discussion of the function of Elizabeth I’s privy chamber and female attendants more fully explained in note 45.

  56. 56.

    No. 3356, 1413, Mary, Queen of France to Henry VIII, 12 October 1514, LP, I, 1513–14; a transcription of the severely damaged BL Cotton MS Caligula D VI, f. 257.

  57. 57.

    Ellis, Original Letters, 2nd Ser., Vol. I, 244.

  58. 58.

    Green, Letters, vol. I, 178–9.

  59. 59.

    Hall, Chronicle, 570.

  60. 60.

    LP, I. ii, 3499 and LP, II. i, 569.

  61. 61.

    BL Cotton MS Caligula D VI, f. 160r, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk to Thomas Wolsey, 18 November 1514.

  62. 62.

    Ibid.

  63. 63.

    Ibid.

  64. 64.

    BL Cotton MS Caligula D VI, f. 196v.

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  1. University College London, London, UK

    Helen Matheson-Pollock

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    Helen Matheson-Pollock

  2. University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom

    Joanne Paul

  3. Swansea University, Swansea, United Kingdom

    Catherine Fletcher

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Matheson-Pollock, H. (2018). Counselloresses and Court Politics: Mary Tudor, Queen of France and Female Counsel in European Politics, 1509–15. In: Matheson-Pollock, H., Paul, J., Fletcher, C. (eds) Queenship and Counsel in Early Modern Europe. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76974-5_4

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