Read Online Bloody Mary by Carolly Erickson - Free Book Online

a daughter. A marriage alliance between them was the obvious alternative to war.
    In September of 1518 the negotiations were concluded. A treaty of universal peace was to bind England and France, sealed by the proxy marriage of the dauphin and the English princess which would be consummated when the dauphin turned fourteen. Among the provisions relating to her dowry rights was the highly significant stipulation that if Henry died without a male heir, Mary would succeed him—the earliest statement of her right to the throne. 5 To the negotiators of the treaty the point was a minor one. There was still a good deal of hope that Henry would have a son—Katherine was pregnant again, and near her term—and in any case no woman had ever been crowned queen of England in her own right. But as evidence of a real if remote possibility the statement was revealing, and prophetic.
    In mid-September ambassadors from the French court arrived in England to sign the treaty and solemnize the marriage. The French made animpressive showing as they rode through London in their silk doublets, surrounded by the Scotsmen of the French king’s guard and a welcoming escort of English nobles and guardsmen, fourteen hundred horsemen in all. At each of the ceremonies and banquets in the following days the French appeared in fresh robes of slashed silk, to the astonishment of the English courtiers. The seemingly inexhaustible wardrobes of the ambassadors were matched by their purses. They gambled heavily, and no state banquet was complete without the card games and dicing the king loved. At a lavish feast given by Wolsey—now a cardinal of the church and papal legate, and rapidly becoming the most powerful man in England next to the king himself—to celebrate the treaty of universal peace, golden bowls of ducats and dice were set out after dinner for the guests to play at mumchance. After midnight, when all the others had left, Henry “remained to play high with some Frenchmen.”
    The treaty arrangements were sworn to by both parties before the high altar of St. Paul’s, and then came the wedding ceremony. At eight o’clock in the morning of October 5 the betrothal parties and their retinues assembled in a hall at Greenwich. Henry stood in front of his throne, with Katherine, his sister Mary, Wolsey and another papal legate, Cardinal Campeggio, at his side. During the bishop of Durham’s long oration in praise of the marriage—at least the third such declamation to which the French visitors had been subjected since their arrival—Mary’s nurse stood at Katherine’s side holding the princess in her arms. Mary was dressed in cloth of gold, wearing over her golden curls a black velvet cap that was studded with jewels. She was small for her age, and delicate, with her father’s fair skin and light eyes. Her coloring and even features made her a very pretty child, and she remained smiling and poised throughout the long ceremony, true to Henry’s proud boast that “his daughter never cried.” When the bishop had finished the ambassadors asked for Henry and Katherine to consent to the marriage, the French admiral Bonnivet consenting on behalf of the dauphin, and Wolsey slid a tiny ring onto Mary’s fourth finger. In it was a very large diamond—his wedding gift to the princess. The admiral, acting for the absent bridegroom, passed it over her second joint in a final solemnity, and then the entire company adjourned to the gorgeously decorated chapel for a celebratory mass. Yet another banquet closed out the festivities, and the dancing that followed it lasted until three in the morning, long after the bride had been put to bed. 6
    The visit of the French ambassadors to England was only half of the process of peacemaking and matchmaking; to complete it English ambassadors had to travel to Paris to sign the treaty and stand in place of the princess at a repeat of the proxy wedding. Early in December the English party arrived in Paris, and a few