First feted but later deprived of her standing as a royal, the future Mary I grew up amid religious, political and familial strife
WORDS: SPENCER MIZEN
Childhood is meant to be a time of innocence and stability. A time when you’re sheltered from the often-cruel world into which you’re born. No such luck for the girl who would become Queen Mary I.
The first 20 years of Mary’s life can best be described as a rollercoaster ride – a ride on which she was cherished, mollycoddled and groomed for power, before being ostracised and humiliated. These were hardly the ingredients needed to produce a well-rounded adult.
Even when Queen Catherine of Aragon gave birth to Mary – in the opulent surroundings of Greenwich Palace, on 18 February 1516 – her arrival was a source of joy tinged with disappointment. Joy because she was a healthy baby, born to a royal couple that had experienced the tragedy of stillborn babies on more than one occasion. Disappointment because the one thing her father, Henry VIII, sought above all else was a boy.
CHERISHED CHILD
Despite his regrets over her gender, the king doted on Mary, reportedly boasting to the Venetian ambassador Sebastian Giustiniani that his daughter never cried.
Yet as well as being the object of the king’s affections, Mary was also a pawn in the diplomatic marriage market, who could be deployed to shore up the king’s position on the European stage. And this was a process that got under way almost as soon as the young princess could walk. In October 1518, at the tender age of two, Mary was betrothed to Francis, the heir apparent to the throne of France.
Francis was only a few months old, so at the betrothal ceremony, the admiral of France was called in to act as the dauphin’s proxy, placing a diamond ring on her finger. The young Mary, we’re told, stole the show, asking: “Are you the dauphin of France? If you are, I wish to kiss you.”
The betrothal was cancelled just three years later – a victim of the vagaries of England’s relationship with France – yet it wasn’t long before Henry was casting around the courts of Europe for another potential husband for his daughter. Soon, his eye alighted on another prize royal catch, Charles V, the king of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor. Charles was 22 and Mary only six. It was a cavernous age gap but not quite cavernous enough to prevent the two from getting engaged. Charles pulled the plug on the b
