Mary Tudor, Queen of France

Mary Tudor (/ˈtjuːdər/ TEW-dər; 18 March 1496 – 25 June 1533) was an English princess who was briefly Queen of France as the third wife of King Louis XII. Louis was more than 30 years her senior. Mary was the fifth child of Henry VII of England and Elizabeth of York, and the youngest to survive infancy.
Following Louis's death, Mary married Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk. Performed secretly in France, the marriage occurred without the consent of Mary's brother Henry VIII. The marriage necessitated the intervention of Thomas Wolsey; Henry eventually pardoned the couple after they paid a large fine. Mary had four children with Suffolk. Through her older daughter, Frances, she was the maternal grandmother of Lady Jane Grey, the disputed queen of England for nine days in July 1553.
Mary was the fifth child of Henry VII of England and Elizabeth of York, and the youngest of those who survived infancy. She was born at Sheen Palace, on 18 March 1496. Mary was likely named after either the Virgin Mary, or her maternal aunt, Mary of York, who died at the age of 14 in 1482. A privy seal bill dated from midsummer 1496 authorizes a payment of 50 shillings to her nurse, Anne Skeron. Also, Erasmus stated that she was four years old when he visited the royal nursery in 1499–1500. At age six, she was given her own household, complete with "a staff of gentlewomen assigned to wait upon her", a schoolmaster, and a physician. She was given instruction in French, Latin, music, dancing, and embroidery. Her Governess was Joan Vaux, who she called Mother Guildford; the two shared a close relationship and Mary was furious when Joan was sent back to England upon her arrival in France.
As children, Mary and her brother, the future King Henry VIII, shared a close friendship. He named his first surviving child, the future Queen Mary I, in her honour. They lost their mother when Mary was just six and, given the number of bills paid to her apothecary from 1504 to 1509, it would appear that Mary's own health was fragile.
She was known in her youth as one of the most beautiful princesses in Europe; Erasmus said of her that "Nature never formed anything more beautiful."
In 1506, during a visit from Philip I of Castile, Mary was called to entertain the guests, dancing and playing the lute and clavichord. In September 1506, Philip died, and on 21 December 1507, Mary was betrothed to his son Charles, later Holy Roman Emperor. The betrothal was called off in 1514.
Cardinal Wolsey negotiated a peace treaty with France, and on 9 October 1514, at the age of 18, Mary married the 52-year-old King Louis XII of France at Abbeville. She was accompanied to France by several English maids of honour (one of whom was Anne Boleyn) under the supervision of her old governess Lady or "Mother" Guildford, who acted as her principal lady-in-waiting.
Despite two previous marriages, Louis had no living sons, and sought to produce one. But he died on 1 January 1515, less than three months after marrying Mary, reputedly worn out by his exertions in the bedchamber, but more likely from the effects of gout. Their union produced no children. Following Louis's death, his successor, King Francis I of France, made unsuccessful attempts to arrange a second marriage for Mary.
Mary had been unhappy in her marriage of state to King Louis XII, as she was almost certainly already in love with Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk. King Henry VIII was aware of Mary's feelings; letters from her in 1515 indicated that she had agreed to wed Louis only on condition that "if she survived him, she should marry whom she liked". However, Henry VIII wanted any future marriage to be to his advantage. The King's Council, not wishing to see Charles Brandon gain further power at court, was also opposed to the match.
Meanwhile, rumours swirled in France that she would wed either Antoine, Duke of Lorraine, or Charles III, Duke of Savoy. On 26 June 1515, the Duke of Lorraine married Renée of Bourbon instead. At one point, even King Francis I, perhaps in hope of his wife Queen Claude's death, was one of Mary's suitors in the first week of her widowhood; Mary asserted that she had given him her confidence in order to avoid his overtures. A pair of French friars went so far as to warn Mary that she must not wed Charles Brandon, because he "had traffickings with the devil".
When King Henry VIII sent Brandon to bring Mary back to England in late January 1515, he made the Duke promise that he would not propose to her. Once in France, Mary persuaded Charles to abandon that pledge; Charles later wrote to the King stating he "never saw a woman so weep". The couple married in secret at the Hotel de Cluny in Paris on 3 March 1515 in the presence of just 10 people, among them King Francis I. Technically, this was treason, as Brandon had married a royal princess without King Henry's consent. Henry was outraged, and the privy council urged that Charles be imprisoned or executed; Mary, as royalty and the King's favourite sister, was safe from execution.
Due to the intervention of Thomas Wolsey and Henry's affection for both his sister and Charles, the couple were given only a heavy fine of £24,000, to be paid to the King in yearly instalments of £1000; the whole of Mary's dower from King Louis XII of £200,000; and the gold plate and jewels King Louis had given or promised her. The £24,000 was later reduced by the King. They officially later married on 13 May 1515 at Greenwich Palace in the presence of King Henry VIII and his courtiers. In 1528, Charles secured a papal bull from Pope Clement VII legitimising the marriage.
Mary was Charles Brandon's third wife, and he had two daughters, Anne and Mary, by his second wife Anne Browne, who had died in 1510 or 1512. Mary raised the girls with her own children. Even after her second marriage, Mary was normally referred to at the English court as the Queen of France, and was not known as the Duchess of Suffolk in her lifetime, despite being legally allowed to be. Mary spent most of her time at the Duke's country seat of Westhorpe Hall in Suffolk.
In the late 1520s, relations between King Henry VIII and his sister Mary were strained when she opposed the King's attempt to obtain an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, whom Mary had known for many years. Mary strongly disliked Anne Boleyn (King Henry's intended wife), whom she had first encountered in France. Anne and her sister Mary Boleyn had been among the maids of honour in the entourage that had accompanied Mary to France for her wedding to King Louis XII.
In March 1532, Venetian Ambassador Carlo Capello wrote of an incident where
Though it was said to be caused by a private quarrel, he was "assured it was owing to opprobrious language uttered against Madam Anne by his Majesty's sister, the Duchess of Suffolk, Queen Dowager of France." Anne Boleyn was the niece of the Duke of Norfolk mentioned by Capello.
Mary had multiple bouts of illness, requiring treatments over her lifetime. She died, age 37, at Westhorpe Hall, Suffolk, on 25 June 1533, having never fully recovered from the sweating sickness she caught in 1528. The cause of death has been speculated to have been tuberculosis, appendicitis, or cancer.
As an English princess, daughter of a king, sister to the current king, and a dowager queen of France, Mary Tudor's funeral and interment was conducted with much heraldic ceremony. A requiem mass was held at Westminster Abbey. Her body was embalmed and held in state at Westhorpe Hall for three weeks. On 21 July 1533, a delegation from France joined the English delegation for the lavish funeral ceremony. Her daughter Frances was chief mourner, accompanied by her husband and siblings. As was tradition, neither Mary's husband nor her brother the king attended. The funeral procession included 100 torch bearers, clergy carrying the cross, six horses pulling the hearse, other nobility and 100 of the duke's yeomen. A requiem mass and burial at Bury St. Edmunds Abbey followed the next day. At the funeral, her step-daughters, Anne and Mary, pushed themselves to the head of the cortège just before the coffin was lowered into the crypt of the Abbey, much to the consternation of their half-siblings.
Five years later, when the monastery was dissolved, Mary's body was removed to nearby St. Mary's Church, Bury St. Edmunds. In 1784, her remains were disinterred, her coffin opened, and locks of her hair were taken by Horace Walpole, Dorothy Bentinck, Duchess of Portland, and several others.
Upon her arrival in France, Mary was described as being "handsome and well favoured, were not her eyes and eyebrows too light; she is slight, rather than defective from corpulence, and conducts herself with so much grace, and has such good manners, that for her age of 18 years—and she does not look more—she is a paradise."
Contemporaries lauded her beauty, including her husband, Louis XII, who described her as a "nymph from heaven". She regularly took part in masques at her brother's court, and enjoyed "hearing singing, instrumental music, and dancing".
Mary was described as "very lively", with one nobleman noting "[she] is never still." She was also said to be cheerful and affable; this is shown when, upon meeting her future husband Louis for the first time, she blew him a kiss in greeting.
Mary and Charles had four children, two daughters and two sons:
Mary and Charles raised their children at their home at Westhorpe Hall. Their two sons, both named Henry, are commonly mistaken for being the same son. Both boys died when they were children.
Mary's widower later married their son's (Henry Brandon, Earl of Lincoln) betrothed, who was also his ward, the 14-year-old Catherine Willoughby, by whom he had his two youngest sons.
She is the main character in several historical fiction novels:
Mary's portraits and other depictions are mostly subject of heated debate as to if it is really her or somebody else, who draw or painted her or whether the painting is misdated. Confirmed depictions of her include:
Alleged portraits of Mary meant for Charles V include:
Many believe it is the lost painting of Queen Isabella I of Castile by Sittow, but it is not attributed to him.
Note: on Wikipedia this painting is labelled as by Jean Perréal, location unknown. However, on the museum's webpage it is not labelled as by him but by anonymous Maître de la Reine Marie Tudor(Master of Queen Mary Tudor).
Lost depictions:
2 in Ashmolean Museum, one labelled as by follower of Jean Clouet, and the other by anonymous. 1 in Uffizi Gallery -labelled as Ritratto di donna(portrait of woman) 3911 F, it is a very crude sketch by Francois Clouet, who was a child when Mary was in France. 2 more versions from Bibliothèque Municipale Méjanes, Aix en Provence. Both bear a 16th-century text(thus most likely to be original). However the picture on Wikipedia of one of them is described as not the real drawing but a print of it.
Other suggested depictions: