her father's court and celebrated her engagement to a son of the king of
France. But Henry VIII's attitude toward Mary and her mother had started to
change. He had decided that God disapproved of his marriage to Catherine;
why else had the queen failed to produce healthy male children? And he was
in love with the woman who was to become his second wife: Anne Boleyn.
Soon Mary learned that Henry wanted to annul his marriage to her mother.
For this, the king needed the pope's permission. While he waited, he
continued to treat Catherine as his queen and Mary as his heir. But Mary's
legitimacy was now in doubt, making her less valuable on the marriage
market. The French engagement was broken off and no other match was
arranged for her, although her father's advisors considered marrying her to
King Henry's illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy. (Fitzroy married someone
else. He died young and without heirs.)
Henry grew increasingly angry with Catherine for resisting his attempt to
end their marriage. Finally, in 1531, he sent Catherine away from court.
After being shuffled between various castles and palaces, the queen ended
up a prisoner at Kimbolton Castle, near Huntingdon. Realizing that the pope
would never grant his divorce, Henry split from the Catholic church,
established the Church of England, had his marriage declared invalid, and
married Anne Boleyn. Anne gave birth to a daughter, Princess Elizabeth, in
1533.
Mary was now officially a bastard, called "the lady Mary," but, like her
mother, she refused to accept her change in status. Henry was infuriated by
his daughter's defiance and threatened to have her executed if she did not
stop referring to herself as a princess. When Mary was eighteen, her
household was disbanded and she was sent to live in Princess Elizabeth's
household, where she was treated badly. Henry refused to see her, but he
was not completely indifferent to Mary. Once, glimpsing her at a window, he
nodded and touched his hat politely.
Catherine and Mary were not permitted to visit each other, and Catherine
died in 1536 without seeing her daughter again. Now Mary was alone. Four
months after Catherine's death, however, Mary's greatest enemy toppled from
power when Anne Boleyn was arrested on false charges of adultery and
executed. Anne had hated Mary and stated that she wanted her dead. With
Anne gone, Henry treated his eldest daughter somewhat more kindly. His
third, fourth, and sixth wives were all well-disposed toward Mary. (She got
along less well with his teenaged fifth wife, Katherine Howard.) Although
she never regained her former status or her father's affection, she was
once again part of the royal family.
At first she got along well with the king's other children. As Elizabeth
and Edward grew up, however, up their Protestant views put them at odds
with Mary, who never swayed from her devout Catholicism. After Henry's
death in 1547, Mary's nine-year-old half-brother became King Edward VI. As
king, Edward scolded and bullied Mary about her beliefs. On his deathbed he
disinherited her in favor of their teenaged cousin Lady Jane Grey.
Lady Jane Grey did not want to be queen, but that didn't stop her father
and his supporters from trying to seize the throne for her after King
Edward's death in 1553. Few people supported "Queen Jane," however. In the
end even Jane's ambitious father abandoned her, and Mary was proclaimed
queen. After a lifetime of sorrow and danger, the 37-year-old Mary Tudor
was now the most powerful person in England.
The unhappy Queen
Soon after her accession, Mary began considering the possibility of
marrying Prince Philip of Spain, the son of her former fiancй, Emperor
Charles V. It worried her that Philip was 11 years her junior because he
was "likely to be disposed to be amorous, and such is not my desire, not at
my time of life, and never having harbored thoughts of love." With
difficulty the emperor's envoy convinced her that Philip was a stable,
mature adult who would help protect her kingdom.
Mary's subjects were alarmed to learn of her engagement to the Spanish
prince, fearing that England would become part of Spain. The queen,
however, had no intention of turning the country over to Philip. He arrived
in England on July 20, 1554, and met Mary for the first time on July 23.
Mary liked Philip from the start, and he treated her kindly, although he
probably found her unattractive. (The men who had accompanied him to
England later described Mary as old, badly dressed, and almost toothless.)
The wedding took place two days later. Two months later, Mary's doctors
told her that she was pregnant.
In December a law was passed that allowed bishops of the Church of England
to convict heretics and sentence them to death by burning. Almost 300
people were burned alive during Mary's reign with Mary's full approval,
earning her the nickname "Bloody Mary."
By the summer of 1555 it became obvious that Mary was no longer pregnant,
if she had ever been. Mary was bitterly disappointed. Philip left England
that August, promising Mary that he would soon return. Mary missed him
desperately. Philip didn't return to England until March of 1557. During
his absence he had become the king of Spain. After a few months in England
he left to go to war; Mary never saw him again. She became depressed and
paranoid. Tortured by loneliness and unhappiness, Queen Mary fell ill. She
died on November 17, 1558 and was succeeded by her half-sister, Queen
Elizabeth I.
ELISABETH I
The unwanted Princess
Elizabeth I was born on September 7, 1533 at Greenwich Palace near London.
Her father was England's King Henry VIII; her mother was the king's second
wife, Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth had an older half-sister, Mary, who was the
daughter of the king's first wife, Catherine of Aragon.
King Henry had moved heaven and earth to marry Anne Boleyn. He had parted
from the Catholic Church, established the Church of England, and annulled
his twenty-four year marriage to Queen Catherine - partly because he loved
Anne, and partly because he wanted the male heir Catherine could not give
him. Henry and Anne were convinced that their first child would be a boy.
The new queen even had a document drawn up ahead of time that announced the
birth of a prince. When the prince turned out to be a princess, her parents
were dismayed.
Over the next few years Anne had three miscarriages, and Henry - who had
become disenchanted with her even before Elizabeth's birth - decided to be
rid of her. In 1536 he had Anne arrested on false charges of adultery. The
Archbishop of Canterbury bowed to the king's will by declaring that Henry's
marriage to Anne had never been valid. Like her half-sister Mary, two-year-
old Elizabeth was now considered illegitimate. Anne was executed, and two
weeks later the king married Jane Seymour.
In 1537 Queen Jane died after giving birth to a son, Edward. Elizabeth and
Mary participated in his christening ceremony. As Edward grew older, he and
Elizabeth became close; although they lived in separate households, they
wrote to each other often.
When Elizabeth was four, Katherine Champernowne became her governess. The
well-educated Champernowne - known as Kat Ashley after her marriage in 1545
- began teaching Elizabeth astronomy, geography, history, math, French,
Flemish, Italian, Spanish, and other subjects. Elizabeth was an excellent
student. Her tutor Roger Ascham later wrote, "She talks French and Italian
as well as she does English. When she writes Greek and Latin, nothing is
more beautiful than her handwriting."
In 1540 Elizabeth's father married Anne of Cleves. Repelled by what he
perceived as his bride's ugliness, Henry quickly had the marriage annulled
and instead married Anne Boleyn's first cousin Katherine Howard. Katherine
was very young - about fifteen - and something of a featherbrain, but she
was kind to Elizabeth, who was surely appalled when, in a repetition of the
past, the queen was arrested and charged with adultery. This time the
charges were true. Queen Katherine was beheaded in 1542, when Elizabeth was
seven years old.
Katherine Howard's violent death seems to have had a lasting impact on
Elizabeth. At the age of eight she met one of Prince Edward's classmates,
Robert Dudley, and told him of an important decision she had made. "I will
never marry," she said. It was a decision that would shape her life.
Thomas Seymour
In 1543 Elizabeth gained yet another stepmother when Henry married his
sixth and final wife, Katherine Parr. Four years later Henry VIII died,
leaving his crown to Edward. According to Henry's will, if Edward died
without heirs he would be succeeded by Mary. If Mary died without heirs,
Elizabeth would become queen.
Soon after Henry's death, Elizabeth received a marriage proposal from
handsome Thomas Seymour, who was England's Lord Admiral and the brother of
the late Queen Jane. Knowing that Seymour was simply seeking the power that
marriage to the king's sister could bring him, Elizabeth turned him down.
So Seymour proposed to the widowed Queen Katherine, who had been in love
with him before her marriage to Henry VIII. Unaware of Seymour's previous
proposal to her stepdaughter, Katherine happily accepted. They were quickly
married, and the following year Elizabeth went to live with them at the
royal Old Manor House in Chelsea.
Thomas Seymour still had designs on pretty red-haired Elizabeth. He took to
visiting her bedroom in the morning before she was dressed. During these
