Practices and Performances of Queenship: Catherine of Aragon and Margaret Tudor, 1503-1533
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PRACTICES AND PERFORMANCES OF QUEENSHIP: CATHERINE OF ARAGON AND MARGARET TUDOR, 1503-1533 BY MICHELLE L. BEER DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2014 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Emerita Caroline Hibbard, Chair Associate Professor Clare Crowston Associate Professor Derek Neal, Nipissing University Associate Professor Carol Symes ABSTRACT This dissertation explores the reigns of two early sixteenth-century queens consort of England and Scotland, Catherine of Aragon (r. 1509-1533) and Margaret Tudor (r. 1503-1513). It examines the responsibilities, rights, duties, and actions of Catherine and Margaret within their sixteenth-century dynastic context, without a teleological focus on the controversies of their later lives. As the first wife of Henry VIII, Catherine of Aragon has often been portrayed as a pious and ultimately tragic figure whose reign has been overshadowed by her inability to bear a male heir. Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII’s sister and queen of James IV, has had her reign continually cast in the shadow of her husband’s tragic early death and her later disastrous career as regent of Scotland. Despite being the common subjects of popular histories, Catherine and Margaret are in fact understudied queens, neither of whom has been the subject of scholarly monographs for over fifty years. This work is the first to consider Catherine and Margaret since the emergence of a robust field of queenship studies, which has combined women’s and gender history with the study of international court culture and politics. This study argues that the particular type of female authority available to queens in monarchical, dynastic regimes must be understood by considering the practices and performances of queenship that allowed queens to accumulate the moral, political, and social capital necessary to act as the public partners of their husbands. In juxtaposing Catherine and Margaret’s reigns, I show that pre-modern queenship shared common challenges, themes, and traditions across borders, while also illuminating how native traditions and personal circumstances could create opportunities and problems for individual queens not encountered by their peers. ii The first two chapters of this work focus on the financial resources and material culture that formed the basis for important practices of queenship by Catherine and Margaret, including the administration of lands, extension of their presence at court through livery, and participation in gift exchanges, which established them as queens consort and enabled them to extend their patronage at their husbands’ courts. I argue that the resources available to each queen were heavily dependent upon both historical traditions of queenship in England and Scotland, and on the personal circumstances of each woman at her royal court. The final four chapters then show how Catherine and Margaret accumulated social and political capital by successfully performing expected queenly virtues including magnificence, hospitality, patronage, and piety. My dissertation argues that areas traditionally considered problematic for queens—their marital relationships, their foreignness, their dependence—were in fact assets that allowed them to succeed as the public partner of the king. My work expands our understanding of queenship and reassesses the definition of a successful queen consort. iii for my father iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project has been many years in the making, and I have acquired too many debts, both personal and professional, for me to adequately acknowledge them all here. Nevertheless, I shall endeavor to express my gratitude to some of the many people in my life who made this dissertation possible. This project could not have been completed without the support and guidance of my advisor Professor Caroline Hibbard, to whom I owe more than I can say. Her work on queenship inspired my own interest in the reigns of Catherine and Margaret, and her support and influences can be seen on every page of this dissertation. I would like to express my sincere thanks to the members of my committee, Professors Carol Symes, Clare Crowston, and Derek Neal, whose challenging comments and probing questions broadened the scope of my thinking and writing. The tireless members of the University of Illinois Pre-modern Reading Group read many drafts of these chapters, and I am grateful for their comments and suggestions. Lastly, I would like to thank all of the members of the Illinois history department, both professors and students, who over the years have shaped me into the scholar I am today. The research for this dissertation was made possible through the generous help of the Mellon Dissertation Research Fellowship from the Institute of Historical Research, London. More specifically, I would like to thank the members of the IHR’s Tudor and Stuart History Seminar, especially Pauline Croft and Simon Healy, for welcoming me to London and providing me with academic and moral support during my time there. The excellent staffs of the National Archives, UK, the British Library, the Scottish National Library, and the Scottish National Archives were exceptionally helpful and efficient. Malcolm Underwood, archivist for St. John’s College, Cambridge, was very kind to me on my visits there and provided many welcome cups of tea and a great deal of help with the St. John’s college archives. I would also like to express v my thanks to Clare Gaskin and Sam and Caroline Finlayson, who opened their homes to me during my research trip in the U.K. and made my time there engaging and enjoyable. Finally, I would like to acknowledge that a project as large as this was only possible to complete through the personal support and love from my family. My husband Michael survived many hours of dinner conversation about British queenship, and he probably knows more about British history than any other computer programmer in the country. Without his encouragement and support this dissertation would never have been possible. My parents, Pamela and Colin, always gave me their love and confidence throughout my graduate school career. Daniel and Sarah, my brother and sister, were truly great cheerleaders, and I am in awe of their own accomplishments while I finished this work. My father passed away before I could complete this dissertation, but it is his shining example of stubborn perfectionism and determination that gave me the confidence both to start and finish my PhD. His faith that all of his children could succeed at whatever we strove for made all of us the people we are today, and I hope that this dissertation will stand as a lasting testament to his memory. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ...................................................................................................... viii INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1 The Financial Resources of Queenship .................................................................. 40 CHAPTER 2 The Queen’s Wardrobe: Clothing Culture and Material Connections ................... 88 CHAPTER 3 The Material Magnificence of Queenship ............................................................ 126 CHAPTER 4 The Queen at Court: Hospitality, Sociability and the Queen as Audience ........... 167 CHAPTER 5 Patronage through Partnership: Service, Largesse, and Rewards in the Queen’s Household and Beyond ............................................................................................................... 204 CHAPTER 6 Queenship and the Performance of Piety .............................................................. 248 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................... 284 APPENDIX ................................................................................................................................. 292 GLOSSARY ............................................................................................................................... 293 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................................... 295 vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS The following list indicates the abbreviations used for printed and manuscript sources and reference works. BL The British Library. London, UK. CDS Bain, Joseph, ed. Calendar of Documents Relating to Scotland. 5 vols. Medieval and Early Modern Sources Online. Edinburgh: H.M. General Register House, 1881-1888. http://sources.tannerritchie.com/earlymodern.php CSP Spanish Bergenroth, G. A., ed., et al. Calendar of Letters, Despatches and State Papers Relating to the Negotiations Between England and Spain Preserved in the Archives of Simancas and Elsewhere. 28 vols. Medieval and Early Modern Sources Online. London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1862-1954. http://sources.tannerritchie.com/earlymodern.php CSP Venetian Brown, Rawdon, ed. Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts Relating to English Affairs: existing in the Archives and collections of Venice, and in other libraries of Northern Italy. 38 vols. Medieval and Early Modern Sources Online. London: Longman, 1864. http://sources.tannerritchie.com /earlymodern.php. Eltham Ordinances “Ordinances for the Household Made at Eltham in the XVIIth Year