Bloody Mary by Carolly Erickson Read Free Book Online

behind her back.” But afterward, taking as her motto the phrase “humble and reverent,” she retreated into a twilight of confinements and royal nurseries, and saw two of her children die in infancy. In giving birth to her last child, a weak little princess who lived less than a year, the queen herself died.
    Of the children of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York the sturdiest and most boisterous was the second boy, the one known throughout his childhood as Prince Hal. A round-faced child with a ruddy complexion, he was given an array of titles before he was a year old—Warden of the Cinque Ports, Constable of Dover Castle—and at three he was created a Knight of the Bath and elected to the Order of the Garter. By the time he was four he could sit a horse well enough to ride in state to Westminster Abbey to be created duke of York, as Perkin Warbeck, whoclaimed the same title, was preparing his invasion on the continent. Erasmus, who met the young prince when he was eight, declared him to possess the qualities of dignity and courtesy in kingly proportion, and thought highly of his prospects. As a younger son Henry was free from the obligations and pressures placed on the heir to the throne, but at age ten and a half his brother’s death suddenly exalted him to the status of prince of Wales. From then on he began to acquire the chivalric skills and popular reputation of a future king. At sixteen Prince Hal was taller than his father, with “limbs of gigantic size.” The Spanish ambassador declared that there was “no finer youth in all the world than the Prince of Wales,” and another observer went even further. “If the names of all the princes who have been called handsome were to be collected,” he wrote, “that of Henry would stand first.” 10 The people who had loved Henry VII worshiped his son. Popular ballads about Prince Hal told how he liked to put on rough clothing and seek out the company of common folk; invariably he would be discovered, recognized, and brought in honor to the palace again surrounded by his devoted subjects. The sturdy little boy became a vigorous and beloved youth, and gave every hope of becoming an able king.
    Henry’s sisters, Mary’s aunts, could not have been more unlike one another. Margaret, two years older than Henry, was a robust and sharp-witted young girl of fourteen when her father married her to James IV of Scotland. James was twenty-eight, and a man of vast and unscrupulous experience with women. (While his marriage to Margaret Tudor was being negotiated, his beautiful mistress Lady Margaret Drummond died in unexplained circumstances.) Margaret endured her marriage, but not without complaint; homesick and humiliated by her husband, she wrote piteous letters to her father in England. James IV’s death at Flodden freed her from her unhappy marriage, but a second marriage to the earl of Angus led to further conflict and eventually to civil war. Margaret had by now become a heavy and somewhat mutton-faced matron, and a considerable woman of the world in her own right. While still married to Angus she took several lovers, including the man who became her third husband, her Lord Chancellor Henry Stewart.
    If Margaret was ill-favored and unfortunate in her domestic life, Henry’s younger sister Mary was probably the most envied woman of her generation. Her portraits confirm the unanimous opinion of contemporaries that she was an extraordinary beauty. Her lovely high forehead and even, delicate features were set off by a complexion fair almost to the point of pallor. Unlike Henry she had dark hair and eyes, and a docile sweetness of expression. She was strong-willed, though, and the knowledge that she was among the most desirable princesses in Europe gave her confidence. She agreed to marry the elderly French king Louis XII (afteran earlier betrothal to Charles of Castile, the future Charles V, was broken off) but made the stipulation that her next husband would be of her own