Mary Croom Brown - Mary Tudor, Queen of France

Transcriber's note: Obvious printer errors have been repaired, but spelling has not been standardized. Any missing page numbers are those that are not shown in the original text.

ROMANTIC HISTORY

A NYONE who writes the life of Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry VII., must owe a debt of gratitude to Mrs Everett Green, who first drove a wedge through the mass of documents dealing with the subject. Since that date, however, new evidence has come to light and fresh readings of mutilated documents have been possible. Here and there a detail has been verified, nothing in itself, but when fitted in suggesting a new meaning to the whole; for this romantic history, dealing as it does with personal detail, is a very jig-saw puzzle. The date of the princess's birth, now at last definitely ascertained, is one of these details; the fact that in France she was twice married to Charles Brandon is another; and, to give a third instance, the detailed evidence shows that in the question of the dismissal of her English train from the French Court, Mary was as much sinner as sinned against. But after all is said, the difference between a book written fifty years ago, and one of to-day lies not so much in the matter newly discovered, as in the method of handling the same documents, and in the present incorrigible habit of valuing personality above ceremony, in this case looking for the woman in the princess and finding her. So while fifty years ago Princess Mary "penned many epistles," now she writes letters; then "she was advanced to maternal honours," now her first child is born. It all means the same thing set to differing measures. We jig along: they walked solemnly.

My thanks are due in no small measure to Miss A. M. Allen and to Mr P. C. Allen for their careful and friendly help, and to the Librarian of Exeter College and the officials of the Record Office for their courtesy.

XII

T O write the full life of Mary Tudor, second daughter of Henry VII., is to attempt the impossible, for the term usually implies a consecutive story from the gate of birth to that of death. We do know now the dates written over both these gates, but while her early days are shrouded by lack of information, her later years are equally indistinct. For less than a couple of years Mary Tudor lives and moves before us, and only this watch and vision is clear. From October 1514 to May 1516 she reveals herself, and fortunately with greater distinctness than she could possibly have done in a chronicle of orderly days with their circling duties and small joys and sorrows. To most ordinary men and women there comes one great moment in life, the third act of the play, to which all the previous scenes have been leading, and it is during Mary's great moment, when her nature was keyed to its highest pitch, that we are able to see her clearest. Before it arrives and after it has passed one desires, and desires in vain, the chronicle of those smaller joys and sorrows, but it is not to be found, and as we cannot have the life let us make the most of the episode.

The date of Mary's birth has at last been fixed as the 18th March 1495. The day and the month have hitherto been a matter of uncertain conjecture, and the year has been given as 1496 on the strength of a privy seal of Henry VII. which runs as follows: "de Termino Pasch anno xi. regis nunc: Anne Skeron nutrici domin Mari ls. pro quarterio unius anni finiti ad festum Sancti Johannis Baptists ultim.; Johann Colyng, Fredeswid Puttenham, Marjeri Gower, Johann Cace, Avis Skidmore et Alic Bywymble cuilibet earum xxxiijs. iiijd, pro attendenciis suis nutrici ducis Eboracencis et sororum suarum per medium annum ad finem predictum." So that Anne Skeron had only completed three months' service at midsummer when the other nurses and attendants had completed six. Now the xi. year of Henry VII. lies between August 22, 1495, and August 21, 1496, so that this midsummer falls before Easter 1496, the date of the document, for it is "ad festum Sancti Johannis Baptist