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Princess Mary As the De Facto Prince(Ss) of Wales, 1525

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Princess Mary As the De Facto Prince(Ss) of Wales, 1525 University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange History Publications and Other Works History January 2010 Princess Mary as the de facto Prince(ss) of Wales, 1525 Jeri L. McIntosh [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_histpubs Part of the European History Commons, History of Gender Commons, Political History Commons, Social History Commons, and the Women's History Commons Recommended Citation McIntosh, Jeri L., "Princess Mary as the de facto Prince(ss) of Wales, 1525" (2010). History Publications and Other Works. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_histpubs/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the History at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in History Publications and Other Works by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “Princess Mary as the de facto Prince(ss) of Wales, 1525” In the winter of 1536, Robert Aske, one of the ringleaders of a grassroots rebellion against the Henrician Reformation, found himself subjected to an intense interrogation by government officials. The rebellion, known then and now as the ‘Pilgrimage of Grace’, had seriously alarmed king and government.1 Officials questioning Aske in the aftermath of the rebellion’s suppression and Aske’s capture focused on his constitutional views of crown power and the royal succession.2 One of the demands of the ‘Pilgrimage’ rebels was the restoration of the recently disinherited Princess Mary to the royal succession. When questioned about this rebel demand, Aske claimed that Henry VIII had placed the sovereignty of the English nation at risk by successfully pushing through Parliamentary legislation which disinherited his eldest daughter, Mary - recognized widely within England and Europe as the most credible claimant to the crown by right of blood. 3 For Aske, the issue hinged on Henry VIII’s right to declare the next successor the crown. As Aske pointed out, no other monarch ever had such prerogative and no other person in the realm had the power to overturn common law when it came to the inheritance of real property.4 If Mary was disinherited and the king’s younger daughter, Elizabeth was derided by many in Catholic Europe as illegitimate, then the way was open for the Scottish king (the ‘alien’ as Aske called him), the nephew of Henry VIII, to make a credible 1 For large-scale studies that focus on the rebellion, see M. Bush The Pilgrimage of Grace: A Study of the Rebel Armies of October 1536 [Manchester UP, 1996] and R.W. Hoyle, The Pilgrimage of Grace and the Politics of the 1530s [Oxford UP, 2003] 2 M. Bateson, “Aske's Examination”, English Historical Review, Vol. V, No. 19 (July, 1890): 550-573 3 The Second Act of Succession, 28 Hen. VIII c.7 ; Bateson, “Aske. .”, 564 4 Bateson, “Aske. .”, 563-4 claim to the English throne.5 While most Englishmen could accommodate a Scottish succession in 1603 after the death of Elizabeth I, in 1536 the English polity was not yet supportive of such a political future. Aske’s enthusiasm for Mary’s succession rights derives in part from this fear of Scottish succession and his belief in her legitimacy as the issue of what he likely considered the legitimate union of her parents, Catherine of Aragon and Henry VIII. This essay will argue that there was another element factoring into Aske’s and the rebels’ support for Mary’s succession rights: her status as the de facto (rather than de jure) Prince(ss) of Wales. Evidence for Mary’s status during the late 1520s-30s (before the birth of the future Edward VI) is found in household documents relating to her vice-regal household in the Welsh Marches in 1525-7, in a printed representation of her Welsh court by her French tutor, Giles Duwes, and in her household accounts of the mid-1530s. The demand by the ‘Pilgrimage’ rebels for Mary’s restoration to the crown, therefore, may have been more than a nostalgic longing for the king to return to his original family (Catherine of Aragon and the Princess Mary). The demand may also have been an astute recognition of the current political reality: Mary was too firmly identified in the public mind as the next English sovereign to be replaced by anyone not the king’s undoubted legitimate male offspring. As Robert Aske pointed out during interrogation, to undermine Mary’s legal status, [after her tour of duty in the Welsh marches], meant putting national security at risk.6 I argue 5 For an explicit identification of Mary’s legitimacy as a preventative measure against a Scottish succession, see item 3 in Pontefract Articles of the ‘Pilgrimage of Grace’ in A. Fletcher, Tudor Rebellions [London, 1973]:128; For one of many attempts to present the infant Elizabeth as a marriage prospect to European royal houses. All such marriage negotiations failed, LP, VII, 191 6 Bateson, “Aske. .”, 564 here that Mary became a positive historical irony before the birth of her half-brother, Prince Edward in 1537. Until that time her stint in the Welsh marches as the de facto Prince(ss) of Wales meant that her technical status as ‘heiress presumptive’ (normal for female heiresses who were usually little more than place-holders for unborn male heirs) was belied by her real status as ‘heiress apparent’, i.e. the next sovereign of England after Henry VIII. II Space does not allow here for a full elucidation of the historical context of Henry’s decision to send Mary to the Welsh marches in the style of previous princes of Wales. In brief, it was to Henry’s advantage for a short period in 1525 to support very ostentatiously Mary’s status as his successor after the victory of her betrothed, Charles V, at Pavia.7 This political context for Henry’s uncharacteristic support of a female succession had evaporated by the time Mary left for the Welsh marches in August 1525 (when Charles V repudiated the betrothal and married Isabel of Portugal) but by then the household had been assembled.8 Moreover, there was a distinct lack of crown representation in Wales following the death of Sir Rhys ap Thomas in South Wales and the recall in North Wales of Charles Brandon, duke 7 For fuller consideration of the historical situation prompting Henry to send Mary to the Welsh marches, see J.L. McIntosh, From Heads of Household to Heads of State . [Columbia UP, 2009], pp.30-1, also available online via the Gutenberg-e website at: http://www.gutenberg-e.org/mcintosh/chapter1.html#s1.4 8 LP, IV pt.1, p.621, 1391 of Suffolk.9 As the Instructions for Mary’s household made clear, from the English crown’s viewpoint, Wales needed its English prince(ss) in order to be governed properly: Inasmuch as by reason of the long absence of any Prince making continuall residence eyther in the principalitie of Wales or in the marches of the same, the good order quiet and tranquilitie of the Countreyes thereabout hath greatlie bene alterd [sic] and subverted and the due adminstracõn of Justice by meanes of sondry contraireties hitherto hindered and neglected. .The kings highness therefore by mature deliberac[i]on and substanciall advise of his counsayle hath determined to send at this tyme his deerest most beloved and onely doughter the Princesse accompained and esteblished with an honorable, sadd discreete, expert counsayle to reside and remayne in the Marches of Wales. .10 Mary’s household was not simply lavish, it was intended to serve as a vice-regal court. Mary’s household cost the king nearly £4,500 per annum.11 This was nearly three times what her household normally cost the king.12 As this essay will detail, the nine-year old princess presided over more than simply a well-appointed manor house(s). It was a royal vice-regal court with jurisdictional, tenurial, and cultural authority. Mary was invested as the nominal head of a privy council whose jurisdictional authority in the marches was second only to the king’s bench in Westminster. Mary’s household council was also her royal privy council. Henry granted to this council sweeping jurisdictional authority within Wales and the nearby marches.13 9 S. J. Gunn, "The Regime of Charles, Duke of Suffolk, in North Wales and the Reform of the Welsh Government, 1509–1525," The Welsh History Review, 12/4 (December 1985): 461–495 and R.A. Griffiths, Sir Rhys ap Thomas and his Family: A Study in the Wars of the Roses and Early Tudor Politics [Wales UP, 1993] 10 BL Cotton Vitellius, C.i., fols. 7v-8r 11 BL Royal 14 B. XIX, 5324, unbound manuscript, no folio numbers 12 LP, III, 337; McIntosh, From Heads of Household to Heads of State . , pp.18-37 [First edition] 13 BL Cotton Vitellius C.i, fols. 7r-18v (mss misnumbered on fol.17) [old numbering: fols.23r-35r] It is worth pausing here to note that Mary’s status as the de facto ‘prince(ss) of Wales’ was unique in English history. Other female heirs apparent like Princess Charlotte, the daughter of George IV or Princess Elizabeth (future Elizabeth II), daughter of George VI did not enjoy a similar status to Mary,.i.e. they never did a tour of duty as if they were Princes of Wales as Mary did in 1525. Most other English princesses had to content themselves with being sisters to the ‘Prince of Wales’. For instance, Mary’s half-sister, Elizabeth, never enjoyed an household and consequent status approaching that of Mary’s household in 1525.
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