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‘A Paragon of Beauty, Goodness, and Virtue’: Princess Mary in the Writings of Imperial Ambassador Eustace Chapuys

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Writing Mary I

Part of the book series: Queenship and Power ((QAP))

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Abstract

This chapter regards the representation of Mary in correspondence written by Holy Roman ambassador Eustace Chapuys. The Imperial ambassador’s writing about Mary provides a glimpse into the adolescence and early adulthood of the princess from a third party. Chapuys served in England from 1529 to 1545, and Mary became a leading character in his writings by 1533, with the two building what Chapuys characterized as a strong friendship. The period covered by Chapuys’ correspondence includes such events as the declaration of her illegitimacy, the dissolution of her household, and the princess’s struggle in coming to terms with the Oath of Supremacy. Chapuys presents Mary as a woman who ultimately put the use of pragmatism ahead of her own beliefs in signing the document.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Calendar of State Papers, Spain, Volume 4 Part 1, Henry VIII, 1529–1530. Edited by Pascual de Gayangos (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1879); Calendar of State Papers, Spain, Volume 4, Part 2, Henry VIII, 1530–33. Edited by Gayangos (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1882). Abbreviated as CSP: Spain in subsequent citations; Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 6, 1533. Edited by James Gairdner (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1882); Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 7, 1534. Edited by Gairdner (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1883); Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 8, January–July 1535. Edited by Gairdner (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1885); Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 9, August–December 1535. Edited by Gairdner (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1886); Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 10, January–June 1536. Edited by Gairdner (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1887); Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 11, July–December 1536. Edited by Gairdner (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1888); and Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 17, 1542. Edited by Gairdner and R.H. Brodie (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1900). Abbreviated at L&P with volume notations in subsequent citations.

  2. 2.

    Aysha Pollintz, “Religion and Translation at the Court of Henry VIII: Princess Mary, Katherine Parr and the Paraphrases of Erasmus,” in Susan Doran and Thomas S. Freeman, eds., Mary Tudor: Old and New Perspectives (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 123–137.

  3. 3.

    Valerie Schutte, “Under the Influence: The Impact of Queenly Book Dedications on Princess Mary,” in Sarah Duncan and Valerie Schutte, eds., The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 39–40.

  4. 4.

    A.G. Dickens, The English Reformation (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, Second Edition, 1989), 12–15. Dickens argues that religious change in England was fundamentally tied to movements that predated Henry VIII’s reign, and gives pride of place to Wycliffe’s movement, whose followers in turn became more openly receptive to Lutheranism.

  5. 5.

    Christopher Haigh, “Dickens and the English Reformation,” Historical Research, No. 77 (2004), 25.

  6. 6.

    Retha M. Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 1–3. Chapuys’s references to Boleyn as “the whore” and “the concubine” were terms for Henry’s second queen that were coined by Dr. Pedro Ortiz, the Holy Roman Imperial ambassador to the Vatican while Chapuys was in England. Chapuys followed Ortiz’s lead in such references in subsequent correspondence between the emissaries and elsewhere.

  7. 7.

    Warnicke, Rise and Fall, 72.

  8. 8.

    Warnicke, Rise and Fall, 66; Mortimer Levine, Tudor Dynastic Problems, 1460–1571 (New York: Allen & Unwin, 1975), 55–66. Warnicke notes the existence of this problem, indicating its negative impact on historical understanding of not just Anne Boleyn, but also of Catherine Howard.

  9. 9.

    Lauren Mackay, Inside the Tudor Court: Henry VIII and His Six Wives Through the Writings of the Spanish Ambassador, Eustace Chapuys (London: Amberley, 2014).

  10. 10.

    Mackay, Tudor Court, 189.

  11. 11.

    Anna Whitelock, Mary Tudor: Princess, Bastard, Queen (New York: Random House, 2009), 51–52.

  12. 12.

    Stephen Hamrick, “‘His wel beloved doughter Lady Mary’: Representing Mary Tudor in 1534,” Renaissance Studies Vol. 31, No. 4 (September, 2017), 502.

  13. 13.

    David Loades, Mary Tudor: A Life (Malden: Blackwell Publishers, Second Edition, 1992), 89.

  14. 14.

    Ralph A. Houlebrooke, The English Family 1450–1700 (London: Routledge, 1984), 215.

  15. 15.

    Chapuys to Charles V, Nov. 27, 1530, “Spain: November 1530, 26–31” in CSP: Spain, Vol. 4, Part 1, 819. Chapuys first mentions a potential marriage for Mary in October 1529, with the rumor of Henry marrying her to Henry Howard, oldest son of the Duke of Norfolk.

  16. 16.

    Chapuys to Charles V, Nov, 27 1530.

  17. 17.

    Rodrigo Nino to Charles V, Nov. 30, 1530, CSP: Spain, Vol. 4, Part 1, 830.

  18. 18.

    Chapuys to Charles V, Dec. 9, 1529, CSP: Spain, Vol. 4, Part 1, 361–362. Chapuys writes that Mary is in Windsor, and reports that his sources tell him she is being treated well below a person of her rank and birth. He adds that he recently received a message from Mary indicating she was working to find a way Chapuys could visit her without being noticed.

  19. 19.

    Chapuys to Charles V, Jan. 20, 1530, CSP: Spain, Vol. 4, Part 1, 433–434. Here, Chapuys expresses concern that Mary’s marriage potential would be greatly harmed should Henry be granted a divorce and the princess be declared illegitimate.

  20. 20.

    Chapuys to Charles V, April 10, 1533, CSP: Spain, Vol. 4, Part 2, 629.

  21. 21.

    Chapuys to Charles V, April 10, 1533.

  22. 22.

    Chapuys to Charles V, April 10, 1533, L&P, Vol. 6, 151.

  23. 23.

    Chapuys to Charles V, April 10, 1533.

  24. 24.

    Chapuys to Charles V, Sept. 10, 1533, L&P, Vol. 6, 465.

  25. 25.

    Chapuys to Charles V, Sept. 15, 1533, L&P, Vol. 6, 469.

  26. 26.

    Chapuys to Charles V, 470.

  27. 27.

    Tessa Grant, “’Thus Like a Nun, Not Like a Princess Born’: Dramatic Representations of Mary Tudor in the Early Years of the Seventeenth Century,” in Susan Doran and Thomas S, Freeman, eds., Mary Tudor: Old and New Perspectives (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 62–63.

  28. 28.

    Charles Beem, The Lioness Roared: The Problems of Female Rule in English History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 78.

  29. 29.

    Chapuys to Charles V, Dec. 16, 1533, L&P, Vol. 6, 617.

  30. 30.

    Chapuys to Charles V, 617.

  31. 31.

    Chapuys to Charles V, 617.

  32. 32.

    Chapuys to Charles V, Oct. 10, 1533, L&P, Vol. 6, 510–511.

  33. 33.

    Catherine of Aragon to the Princess Mary, Sept. 15, 1533, L&P, Vol. 6, 472.

  34. 34.

    Chapuys to Charles V, Oct. 16, 1533, CSP: Spain, Vol. 4, Part 2, 828. Chapuys here writes, “It is impossible for me to describe the love and affection which the English bear to their Princess, but they are already so much accustomed to see and tolerate such disorderly things that they tacitly commit the redress of the same to God and to Your Majesty.” This dispatch was sent in the wake of the reduction of Mary’s household.

  35. 35.

    Chapuys to Charles V, Sept. 27, 1533, L&P, Vol. 6, 486.

  36. 36.

    The Emperor’s Policy, Feb. 25, 1534, “Henry VIII: February 1534, 21–25,” in L&P, Vol. 7, 89–90.

  37. 37.

    King Henry VIII, “The Princess Mary”, Sept. 30. 1533, L&P, Vol. 6, 491.

  38. 38.

    King Henry VIII, “The Princess Mary”, 491.

  39. 39.

    Chapuys to Charles V, Feb. 26, 1534, L&P, Vol. 7, 92.

  40. 40.

    Chapuys to Charles V, Feb. 26, 1534.

  41. 41.

    Chapuys to Charles V, Feb. 26, 1534, 94.

  42. 42.

    Chapuys to Charles V, Feb. 26, 1534, 94.

  43. 43.

    Chapuys to Charles V, April 22, 1534, L&P, Vol. 7, 214.

  44. 44.

    Chapuys to Charles V, April 22, 1534, L&P, Vol. 7, 214.

  45. 45.

    Chapuys to Charles V, April 22, 1534, 214.

  46. 46.

    Chapuys to Charles V, March 7, 1534, L&P, Vol. 7, 127.

  47. 47.

    Chapuys to Charles V, March 30, 1534, L&P, Vol. 7, 165.

  48. 48.

    Chapuys to Charles V, March 30, 1534, 165.

  49. 49.

    The Princess Mary, June 7, 1534, L&P, Vol. 7, 308. Translation by the author (“Ita ut universa et singular in hac scriptura habentur, dicimus, narramus, asserimus, asseveramus ac pretestamur de mera nostra Scientia ac matura deliberation, teste meo manuali signo et sigillo meo.”).

  50. 50.

    Chapuys to Charles V, June 23, 1534, L&P, Vol. 7, 323.

  51. 51.

    Chapuys to Charles V, June 23, 1534, 323.

  52. 52.

    Chapuys to Charles V, Feb. 9, 1535, L&P, Vol. 8, 66.

  53. 53.

    Chapuys to Charles V, Feb. 25, 1535, L&P, Vol. 8, 100.

  54. 54.

    Chapuys to Charles V, Feb. 25, 1535, 100.

  55. 55.

    Chapuys to Charles V, Aug. 3, 1535, L&P, Vol. 9, 5.

  56. 56.

    Chapuys to Nicolas Granvelle, March 23, 1535, L&P, Vol. 8, 169.

  57. 57.

    Whitelock, Princess, Bastard, Queen, 187.

  58. 58.

    Loades, Mary Tudor: A Life, 64.

  59. 59.

    Chapuys to Charles V, Sept. 6, 1535, L&P, Vol. 9, 96.

  60. 60.

    Chapuys to Charles V, Feb. 9, 1535, L&P, Vol. 8, 66.

  61. 61.

    Chapuys to Charles V, Jan. 9, 1536, L&P. Vol. 10, 21.

  62. 62.

    Chapuys to Charles V, Jan. 9, 1536, 21.

  63. 63.

    Chapuys to Charles V, Jan. 29, 1536, L&P, Vol. 10, 69.

  64. 64.

    Princess Mary to Cromwell, June 13, 1536, L&P, Vol. 10, 473–474.

  65. 65.

    Chapuys to Charles V, June 6, 1536, L&P, Vol. 10, 444–446.

  66. 66.

    Chapuys to Mary of Hungary, Apr. 30, 1542, L&P, Vol. 17, 155.

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  1. West Virginia State University, Institute, WV, USA

    Derek M. Taylor

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  1. Beaver Falls, PA, USA

    Valerie Schutte

  2. Southwestern University, Georgetown, TX, USA

    Jessica S. Hower

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Taylor, D.M. (2022). ‘A Paragon of Beauty, Goodness, and Virtue’: Princess Mary in the Writings of Imperial Ambassador Eustace Chapuys. In: Schutte, V., Hower, J.S. (eds) Writing Mary I. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95132-0_2

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