Dr Valerie Schutte reveals how the princess and queen regnant both battled with and befriended her father’s wives
By the age of 27, Mary Tudor, the eldest daughter of King Henry VIII, had known five stepmothers. Her father had famously separated from her mother, Catherine of Aragon, leaving Mary the only living child of their union, and he later remarried five more times. And although Mary always remained close with her mother, the same cannot always be said for her relationships with the stepmothers who followed.
Anne Boleyn, the first to follow Catherine of Aragon in becoming Henry VIII’s queen, was by many accounts Mary’s least-favourite stepmother, and these two shared the worst relationship. By 1527, and possibly even earlier, the event that would have the most significant impact on Mary’s life had already been set in motion, when it became clear that Henry VIII wanted to annul his marriage to Catherine because she had not borne him any living sons. Anne Boleyn, a lady-in-waiting to the queen and mistress to the king, was ready to fulfil this duty – but only as Henry’s wife. Mary became a pawn in the bitter battle as Catherine appealed to Henry to stay in their marriage as they shared, in the words of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, “so sweet a princess for their daughter”.
Henry refused Catherine and moved forward with his annulment, on the basis that Catherine had been previously married to his older brother, Prince Arthur, and their subsequent union was incestuous. Henry and Anne (who by now was pregnant) married on 25 January 1533. Four months afterwards Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine was declared invalid by Thomas Cranmer, the archbishop of Canterbury. Mary was deemed illegitimate and stripped of her succession rights, and her mother was forbidden to see her.
The fall from grace was complete. Mary became a lady rather than a princess, and she and her father were frequently separated, often at the insistence of Anne, creating both a physical and familial rift between father and daughter.
Henry and Anne’s daughter, Elizabeth, was born on 7 September 1533, a development that did not make Mary’s relationship with Anne any less hostile. Mary was now required to acknowledge Elizabeth as a legitimate princess and Henry’s heir, something she
