In this supplementary episode, we hear from Melita Thomas, easily recognizable from her regular appearances on the podcast with Tudor Times. But in this instance, she’s talking about her research for The King’s Pearl, which is her new book on Mary Tudor and her relationship with Henry VIII.
You can buy her book, The King’s Pearl, here. (note, this is an amazon affiliate link – you pay the same price, but the podcast gets part of the proceeds – hooray!)
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Transcript: Melita Thomas on Mary Tudor
Heather:
-but I’m excited to learn more about Mary and your new book. So let me just introduce you quickly.
Melita Thomas is the co-founder and editor of Tudor Times, a repository of information about the Tudors and Stuarts in the period from 1485 to 1625. TudorTime.co.uk.
Melita has loved history since being mesmerised by the BBC productions of “The Six Wives of Henry VIII” and “Elizabeth R”, when she was a little girl. After that, she read everything she could get her hands on about this most fascinating of dynasties. Captivated by the story of the Lady Mary galloping to Framingham to set up her standard and fight for her rights, Melita began her first book about the queen when she was 9. Well, I hope you can find it at some point.
So welcome. Thank you for being here.
What can you tell us about Mary and about your book?
Melita:
Well, first of all, I’d like to thank you, Heather, and Englandcast for inviting me to take part in this inaugural Tudor Summit. Today, I’ll be discussing my new book, The King‘s Pearl, which is about the youth of England’s first queen regnant Mary, and her relationship with her father, Henry VIII.
As you mentioned, I’ve been fascinated by the story of Mary since I was a little girl. First seeing her on the BBC TV series Elizabeth R, then through the wonderful trilogy of novels by Hilda Lewis, which I don’t know if you’ve read, but she was a great writer. I begged my mother to buy these books for me about Mary. My mother was somewhat reluctant since I was nine years old. Obviously, the books had difficult themes, but she was talked into it, and I entered the Tudor world even more closely than through the television screen.
I continued to be intrigued by the story of how Mary even though she was only 17, stood up to Henry VIII, Cromwell, Anne Boleyn, and the whole might of the English government for three years, before eventually being bullied into submission. That together with her courage in claiming the throne in 1553 suggested to me that when the history books said that she was stupid and timid and politically naive and indecisive, that actually, that might not really be the whole story.
During the last 15 years, in fact, there’s been a major reappraisal of Mary’s reign by historians, and her successes, as well as her failures, have been given a fair hearing. But whilst the cliche of Bloody Mary is perhaps receding, at least amongst academics, there is a danger of it being replaced with a very disempowering cliche of Mary as tragic Mary. The idea that her youth, she was so bullied and humiliated and browbeaten and she was banished from the court, estranged from her father and only reconciled with him through the good offices of Catherine Parr, that it was a wonder that she functioned at all as a woman or as a queen.
I initially sort of bought into this idea, as Mary hasn’t been very, very damaged by her youth and very cowed by it. But actually, a chance line in a novel set me off on quite a new direction. I don’t know how many of you have read C.J. Sansom’s Shardlake novels. They are absolutely brilliant.
Heather:
I love him.
Melita:
Very well written. Yeah, you are a lover of them too, Heather. I find them very readable perhaps what you should say more readable than more famous books about the period. As well as being readable, they’re meticulously researched. So when Sansom mentions Shardlake, he’s walking on the street, and he mentions passing the grand apartment building, that Henry is having built for Mary at Whitehall, and I had never heard of this.
I immediately looked into it and discovered that of course, Sansom was quite correct. Henry commissioned a two-story block of apartments at the Royal Palace of Whitehall on the riverfront with a beautiful gallery and an oriel window and all the mod cons for Mary. Now, these works were finished in the spring of 1543. We know that because there’s a record in Mary’s accounts of her going along to what nowadays we call the “topping out ceremony” and paying for a tip for all the builders. That was finished in spring 1543.
So, there were major works, so they couldn’t have been planned before the summer of 1542. That timing completely negates the idea that Mary was only restored to Henry’s favor through the good offices of Catherine Parr, because in mid1542, Catherine was still married to her second husband John Neville, Baron Latimer. So it’s got a whole different slant to their relationship. I wanted to investigate further and that became the theme of The King’s Pearl.
When I started researching, what did I find out? Well, it soon became obvious that I had to think of Mary and Henry’s relationship as having two different dimensions. We had a personal one – a father and daughter, and a political one, which was between Henry and a girl who was first a bargaining tool for foreign diplomacy. Then his probable heir for 17 years, and his political enemy. Finally, a woman who he used once again to try to secure foreign alliances, but whom he feared would pose a threat to his son. So this interplay of personal and political elements, they sometimes conflicted. You can see the relationship, twisting and turning as the different elements came to the fore.
Henry, perhaps surprisingly, was a very affectionate father to all of his children. But he knew Mary best and he spent most time with or more time with her than he did with his other children, both in her childhood and later. She was the only child he had an adult relationship with. She was 31 when he died, whereas Elizabeth and Edward were 13 and 9 respectively, and his illegitimate son had died at 17.
When she was very small, Henry, like many a proud father, he would parade her about in his arms, and proclaim that she never cried. Presumably, when she would throw a two-year-old temper tantrum, she was whisked away from the king’s side. When she was older, he would encourage ambassadors to speak to her in Latin and French, and Italian to show off her very considerable intellectual attainments. Mary had a very high-class education from some of the leading humanists of the time.
He was also very proud of her musical ability, which she presumably inherited from him. Mary and Henry were both very talented instrument players. She played the flute and various keyboard instruments. Henry boasted when she was about 12, that she played the spinet better than he did. She was also like Henry, a very accomplished dancer.
Her job as a King’s daughter, her political job was to make a brilliant match of foreign prince and to extend Henry’s influence abroad. Mary herself had as well as being Henry’s daughter, the added cachet of being the maternal first cousin of Emperor Charles V, who was her mother’s nephew. She was also a more valuable prize than most King’s daughters because while Henry didn’t like to admit it, she was his heir. There were questions about how desirable it was for a woman to inherit. But there was no legal reason why Mary couldn’t be Queen of England.
So throughout the period from her birth to 1516 to 1527, Mary was a subject of intense marital negotiations. The first betrothal was in 1518 with the Dauphin of France, which was very prestigious as Queens of France, want of every woman in Europe apart from the Empress. As part of the treaty, Henry was obliged to acknowledge that if she had no brothers, then Mary would be his heir. But he continued to anticipate the son.
That betrothal fell away in 1522 as an even more glorious match appeared, the prospect of Mary actually marrying her cousin the Emperor. So Henry could envisage a future in which his grandson would be Holy Roman Emperor. Again, he had to acknowledge that Mary might be his heir. But it was not until 1524 that he really seemed to have accepted that this was probably going to happen.
By then it was apparent, that Mary’s mother, Catherine of Aragon would have no more children. Initially, Henry seems to have been resigned to the fact, especially with the thought of Mary as Empress and a grandson as emperor as well as King of England. But then Charles let him down. He demanded that Mary be sent to Spain immediately, even though she was only nine and not a marriageable age, which was 12 in those days. Henry was adamant that she could not leave England so young.
This was again a mixture of the personal and the political. Personally, he was very averse to letting Mary leave the country so young, and he did not want her to marry at the age of 12, which was the minimum age acceptable. His grandmother, Lady Margaret Beaufort was widely believed to have been physically very damaged by early childbirth and Henry did not want that to happen to his daughter.
Politically, of course, he couldn’t let Mary go to Spain unless she was to be married immediately in case the marriage never took place and Mary was a hostage. So the arguments went backwards and forwards. Charles insisted on Mary, Henry resisted, and eventually, Charles jilted Mary for another cousin Isabella of Portugal. Henry had no choice but to swallow humiliation. But that together with Catherine now having reached the end of her childbearing, soured his relationship with Mary’s mother, which had previously been good, but it began to deteriorate.
Henry now had two possible heirs. He had Mary who was his legitimate daughter and his illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy. He couldn’t make up his mind what the best route was. So he leant towards Mary his legitimate child, and although she was not formally invested with the title of Princess of Wales, in mid-1525, she was given the position of Head of the Council for Wales and the Marches, and was referred to in letters and in official documents as Princess of Wales.
She is the only woman so far who has ever been referred to by this title in her own right. It implied her status as heir, but it was still informal. Henry not wishing to entirely commit himself also promoted Fitzroy to be Duke of Richmond and Somerset, and Head of the Council of the North.
Mary went off to the Marches of Wales, lived there very comfortably, and was treated with all the respect and deference that the heir of the throne might expect. Although she was still only a child between the ages of nine and 11, 12, her position clearly became part of her sense of identity. She believed herself and thought of herself and considered herself to be the King’s daughter, Princess of Wales, and heir to the crown.
During that time, she saw her parents. She visited the southeast of England. On one occasion, Henry’s friend, Charles, Duke of Suffolk, made a mess of the arrangements. Henry was really very angry with him because he thought he wouldn’t see his daughter, which suggests genuine parental affection that he was missing her. So it was Mary in Wales or in the Marches.
She was also continued to be put forward as a wife for different foreign princes, including the King of France or his second son. But Henry actually begin to think of another potential solution to his problem. Despite his affection for Mary, he wanted a male heir. There are plenty of people alive who remember the Wars of the Roses, and several viable male candidates for the throne. So to protect the Tudor heritage, Henry wanted a son.
At some point around 1526, he became convinced, and there’s no reason not to believe that he sincerely believed that this, he became convinced that his marriage to Catherine was invalid. At the same time, he also fell in love with Anne Boleyn, who was the daughter of one of his courtiers and the sister of a former mistress. To begin with, in Henry’s mind, the two things were separate. But they did become conflated and Henry’s desire to replace Catherine with a potential more fertile wife to give him a male heir became conflated with his desire for Anne.
For Mary from early 1527, when the annulment proceedings began right up until the middle of 1533, Mary’s official position didn’t change. She was still referred to as Princess of Wales and she was still the object of Henry’s affection. Although as time passed, he saw less of her. Anne, fearful that his fatherly affection for Mary would prevent him going the whole hog and actually, setting her aside, discouraged Henry from seeing her.
But it was not until 1533 in the summer of that year, when Anne who is now has been crowned Queen and was pregnant, that Mary’s status began to change. First of all, there was an order to send her jewels back to the king. Then after the birth of Elizabeth, she was commanded to renounce her title of a princess and accept that she was illegitimate, and that she was to be nothing but an attendant to her half-sister. To Henry’s utter astonishment, Mary who had been brought up to think of obedience to the King and to her father, was her duty after her duty to God, absolutely refuse to obey him.
She was aged only 17. She was separated from her mother. Her governors, the Countess of Salisbury forced literally physically sometimes to take a subordinate place to Elizabeth, but she maintained her legitimacy and her right to be acknowledged as Henry’s heir. For three years, she dug her heels in and despite threats and bullying, even on one occasion that being suggested that she should be beaten until her head was a soft as baked apple, she refused to comply.
Henry himself veered between explosive rage at his daughter’s defiance. Apart from anything else, if the King couldn’t control his daughter, it didn’t really speak well of his ability to maintain authority, but also sorrow at the estrangement. He reacted angrily to other people criticizing her. He was close to tears when he talked to her and still actually sent her presents of money and clothes when she asked for them.
It appears from my research that actually she was much closer to the court during this period than is often thought. Although she didn’t see Henry, she was still communicating with members of the court. She certainly kept up regular contact behind Henry’s back with the Emperor’s Ambassador Eustace Chapuys. It’s not clear how she communicated with him, but she obviously had friends who would help her.
In 1536, Mary’s mother died, and although they’ve been separated for five years, Mary was devastated as might be expected. But she also thought that even more pressure would be brought on her to accept not only Henry’s marriage to Anne, but also by now, the removal of the Papal Supremacy from the English Church, which Parliament had given to Henry.
But there was soon to be a new twist in the story. In May of the same year, Anne was arrested and executed for treason. Her alleged crimes being adultery and incest. And within days of Anne’s death, Mary was writing to Cromwell begging to be allowed to write to Henry himself. Just before Anne’s death, Mary received a message from a couple of Henry’s Gentlemen of the Chamber telling her that her fortunes would soon change.
So we wonder how much Mary may have known of what was being pushed against, or how much rumor and gossip was around but she certainly acted very quickly, which suggests that she put her misfortune entirely down to Anne which was perhaps not surprising, but not entirely true, not true at all. In fact, because it was Henry’s decision, and he had now hardened his attitude. Mary must comply with the law or she would face the consequences. Whether he would have had her tried or executed, we can never know that. But he took sufficient steps for Mary and her confidences with Chapuys led us to believe that he would go that far.
After prevaricating for another month, in June of 1536, she capitulated except to the invalidity of her parents’ marriage, that she was not legitimate and not the heir to the throne. Within days, Henry absolutely delighted, and his new wife, Jane Seymour met Mary privately at Hackney. He gave her gifts, established a new household for her within weeks. She’d had Princess of Wales, of course, but larger than the one that Elizabeth had.
Towards the end of the year, she took up residence at court with Henry and Jane. She and Jane were on very good terms. Mary was treated as second in rank only to Jane. On Jane’s death, Mary was chief mourner at the funeral. For the rest of Henry’s reign, she maintained a close relationship with her half-brother, who Jane had died giving birth to.
Mary couldn’t live at court as a single woman. So whilst there was no Queen in situ, she lived close to the court and Henry would visit her but she couldn’t actually be part of a male-dominated environment. Then when he married Anne of Cleves, she rejoined the court and seems to have been on good terms with Anne of Cleves.
She had a less comfortable relationship with Henry’s fifth wife, Katherine Howard, who thought Mary did not treat her with sufficient respect. It was probably hard for Mary to conceal her dismay at Henry’s marriage to a girl who was at least five years younger than herself, and who have good English birth and was not at the rank of her own mother or even Anne of Cleves. However, the two got along better as time passed.
Mary accompanied the court on the Great Northern Progress of 1541. Katherine became fond enough of her to give her a gold pomander, which was a rather nice present, which I had one. So following the sudden and obviously shocking arrest and execution of Katherine, Mary again lived separately from the court. But as noted above, Henry arranged for new apartments to be built for her at Whitehall.
On Christmas 1542, Mary made a grand procession across London to Hampton Court for the holidays and Henry always the gentleman rode out to meet her. So from the time of Mary’s capitulation into Henry’s demands in 1536, marriage negotiations have once again been a constant in her life. She was put forward for her cousin Don Luis of Portugal, for William, Duke of Jülich-Cleves-Berg, Anne of Cleves’s brother, Philip, Duke of Bavaria who visited her on several occasions, was even seen to kiss her. Possibly the one shape of romance in Mary’s youth.
She was also suggested as a bride for the Voivode of Transylvania, which might have been an interesting result. That negotiations founded on Mary’s status. Henry was adamant that she was illegitimate. Although he was prepared to agree that she would inherit the throne after Edward if Edward would have no children, it would have to be after any other legitimate children born to Henry including daughters.
Since practically everyone in Europe even the Lutherans believe Mary to be legitimate, they wanted her to rank above any subsequent daughters of Henry’s. But on this point tending would not be moved. He would get Mary a dowry as his daughter, acknowledge her a potential successor, but only on his own terms.
This is one of the best-documented periods of Mary’s youth. Her privy purse expenses are still excellent. They give a fascinating insight into her daily life. She was actually quite extravagant. She bought huge quantities of expensive clothes, a taste she definitely shared with Henry. He sent her beautiful fabrics, cloth of gold, and velvet. He sent her jewelry. She clearly loved jewels.
On one occasion, she purchased 100 pearls at a price of 40 shillings and 4 pence each, which totaled 267 pounds, at a time when a gentleman and his family might live on 20 pounds a year. I mean, this is just enormous spending. She also spent an awful lot of money on presents.
Interestingly, she was on very good terms with people, men and women whose religious opinions are slightly different from hers, and who were in different factions of the court. It’s apparent that Mary attempted to be above any kind of faction and keep on good terms with everybody. She gave Elizabeth a silver box embroidered with a thread, and her half-brother Edward a coat with tinsel sleeves one year.
In July 1543, Henry married Mary’s friend Katherine Parr, who was the good old Lady Latimer. Mary was probably pleased by this not only because Katherine was her friend, but also because Katherine not having had any children by two previous husbands seems pretty unlikely to have a child now who would potentially displace Mary. It’s very interesting to speculate how Mary would have reacted to the birth of another daughter. We can only wonder what she would have thought about it and whether she would have still seen her own ..as superior.
But for the remainder of Henry’s life, Mary lived at court sharing intellectual interests with Katherine, musical interests with her father, and she even continued studying and used her considerable Latin skills to translate Erasmus’ Paraphrases on the New Testament a book Katherine sponsored. So they remained on good terms.
Her place in the succession was assured by the Act of Succession 1544, which confirmed what Henry had maintained since 1537, that she would inherit after Edward and any legitimate daughters.
Henry and Mary, they continue to enjoy each other’s company. They hunted and rode together. Towards the end of his life, Henry bought Mary a new horse for which she paid five pounds. He also ordered a consignment of arrows for archery and specified some particular ones to be given to her. Mary was obviously a keen archer. She bought bows and arrows and quivers from time to time. But in late 1546, Henry’s health deteriorated. He shot himself away from all his family–
Here we are. I can’t tell you now, but I hope that this introduction has given you the idea that the relationship between Henry and Mary was a good deal more nuanced than is sometimes portrayed.
Heather:
I love that story about him having this fatherly pride and saying that she never cried and everything like that, that’s so–
Melita:
Yes. Pretty unlikely I think most two year-olds cry from time to time. But yes, maybe so spoiled she didn’t need to.
Heather:
Perhaps she never needed to cry because she just got everything. People assume that Mary and Thomas Cromwell must have been enemies. What can you tell us about their relationship?
Melita:
Yes, it’s difficult to tell because again, there’s sort of a personal and a political element to it. But Cromwell, he definitely seems to have favored an alliance between England and the Empire. He promoted that rather than an alliance with France.
In 1536, after the death of Anne, it was Cromwell to whom Mary wrote. He went to considerable trouble to organize the reconciliation. He kept trying to persuade Mary to make a full submission. She would write back kind of saying, no, she couldn’t go that far. He would then try to persuade her again. Eventually, he sent her a very stern letter saying that she was the most obstinate woman ever born, he wants nothing more to do with her, to please stop writing to him unless she was going to conform.
So once Mary had given in, she wrote to Cromwell, she thanked him. He gave her two horses on occasions. One year, in the February, regular Valentine’s Day ceremonies, she wrote to him, she called him her, she described it as a perfect friendship. She thanked him for all his efforts on her behalf. They exchanged presents.
She could have hated him in her heart because he had destroyed the monasteries. We know from later events that Mary, although she was not, doesn’t seem to be terribly interested in relics and that sort of thing, she definitely believed in the monastic ideal. But there’s no sign of her burying a grudge against Cromwell at all. She was a godmother to his grandson. So yes, again, a much more nuanced relationship than we might suppose.
Heather:
Why did she take so long to accept the annulment of her parents’ marriage? Why was she being so stubborn?
Melita:
I think it was because she had, as I said, before, really internalize the idea that she was the King’s heir. Whilst Mary refused to accept anybody else as Henry’s heir, if she married anybody else, then there would be a legitimate claim for her and her husband to claim the throne. Since all the foreign rulers had very little interest in Elizabeth as a potential heir or potential wife for their sons, they wanted Mary, as long as she continued to persist.
It was open to her after Henry’s death to mount a challenge to the throne that nobody could say she was, she had broken her oath. As long as she continued to maintain it, nobody could accuse her of changing her mind, of giving in, of swearing an oath and then breaking it. It would give legitimacy to her claims.
Whereas Henry and Anne wanted her to accept Elizabeth as Henry’s heir, she would then, in the event of Henry’s death, it would have been easier for Anne or whoever was left to promote Elizabeth above Mary, if she had accepted an inferior position.
I think that was her motivation. I mean, clearly, there was a motivation or respect for her mother and a desire to maintain the Supremacy of the Catholics in England, but I think it was, there was a strong political dimension to her decision.
Heather:
When she did return to court, what was life like for her? What did she do?
Melita:
As I mentioned before, she actually seemed to have had a whale of a time, most of the time. She took part in court ceremonies. She had beautiful clothes. She went hunting. She danced. She had friends. She went to dinner parties. She had lots of lots of godchildren. Quite surprisingly, one of her godchildren was the child of John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland, who tried to bar her from the throne.
But always in the background, there was fear and there was a threat. I talked about a period in the late 1530’s, when Mary was clearly either deceiving Henry or deceiving her cousin Charles, because she was saying one thing to one of them, and something else to the other of them. It’s quite difficult to unpick whether she was deliberately planting information on the Imperial Ambassador or whether she was effectively telling state secrets to him. It’s quite interesting. She got involved in political chicanery without a doubt.
She seems to have been a woman who had had a lot of friends. Her biggest entertainment was gambling. She was a very heavy gambler. Yes. I know it’s a hard thing to square with perceptions of Mary. But actually, if you look at her life, she was a gambler. She gambled the cards. She gambled quite heavily on dice and polls. Particularly cards, seemed her type of thing.
But also she gambled throughout those years when she stood up to Henry, but she wouldn’t push it too far. Most of all, she gambled in 1553 when she claimed the throne, so she had a gambler’s nature. She enjoyed the antics of her fool.
She was very charitable. She gave a lot of money, particularly to prisons, and prisoners in a time when, if you were in prison, you had to pay for your own upkeep. She gave money to the monasteries until they were closed down. Then after that to almshouses and poor houses. Quite often handed out small sums of cash to people as she rode past.
She seems particularly to have given money to Welsh people, which perhaps was her way of maintaining in her own mind, her position of Princess of Wales. She was given from time to time leeks, even after she had been officially demoted. The Yeoman of the King’s Guard gave her a leek on David’s Day, which the leek being the symbol of Wales.
So there was always a threat in the background and the events of 1539 to 41, the Exeter Conspiracy which saw the death of a number of her friends, must have been particularly difficult, of course, the execution of her governess, Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury.
But I suppose like many children, she loved her father even though he had made her life difficult. Most children who suffer at the hands of a parent don’t blame the parent unless they absolutely have to. So it was a mixed picture. Nuanced, I think.
Heather:
That should be the title – Lessons on Nuance.
Melita:
Yes, absolutely.
Heather:
So what was her relationship like with her stepmothers?
Melita:
Clearly, her relationship with Anne Boleyn was fraught. She must have known Anne Boleyn since 1526, I think. The first time they were recorded as being in the same room was when they took part in a pageant together. Then during the late 1520’s whilst Henry was still adamant that his interest in Anne Boleyn was different with his desire to have his marriage annulled, it’s probable that Mary accepted that it was more a palatable thing to believe than her father preferred another woman to her mother.
She probably just thought of Anne as a mistress which was not something that would endear her to Anne. It’s obvious from 1530 or so onwards that Anne saw Mary as her real enemy, not Catherine because Henry’s continuing affection for Mary threatened Anne and she was very keen to keep them apart.
Jane Seymour, she was Mary was very attached to. When Jane died she was the chief mourner but she was so distraught to begin with that somebody else had to take her duties on because she was too upset.
Anne of Cleves, there’s not a lot of evidence about it such as there suggests that they got on well. Later, Anne of Cleves rode in Mary’s coronation procession. I think Mary paid for her funeral as well.
Katherine Howard, after the rather difficult beginning, it definitely improved. Katherine was happy for Mary to come back and live at court.
As I mentioned before she and Catherine Parr were close friends. There’s a very nice inscription in Catherine’s prayer book which Henry made actually which was probably to Mary. It’s possible it was to Elizabeth but it was probably to Mary. Referring to her as his own good daughter and asking her to pray for him. So you can have a vision of Henry with Catherine and Mary actually signing each other’s prayer books as was common practice in those days.
So on the whole, good other than with Anne Boleyn.
Heather:
That makes sense. Yeah. You certainly painted a different picture of her than what’s commonly kind of thought of when people think about her.
What do you think other than nuance, what do you think are the main ways that we should remember her?
Melita:
Well, I’m obviously talking in this book about Mary’s youth. I don’t go beyond the death of Henry VIII in 1527. There’s obviously the later volumes to come which we’ll talk about the rest of Mary’s life. It may be I discover new and different things then.
I think the most interesting thing I think I’ve taken away from this is that Mary was much more political than I thought. I had a vision of her as, I wouldn’t go with the naïve view of some of the male 20th-century historians, but I had a vision of her as quite a straightforward person, what you saw, what you got.
But it’s very apparent from the records of the 1530’s and early 1540’s that she was just as capable of political intrigue as anybody else. I think what’s interesting and something I might want to explore in a later book, is how she maintained her relationships at court with the different factions.
Edward Seymour, Jane’s brother was a very close friend. Although later as Duke of Somerset, they had religious differences and as I mentioned before, the Dudleys were friends. She was godmother to their children, one of their children.
Another interesting friendship was with Katherine Willoughby who was the Duchess of Suffolk. Katherine later became a very strong radical Protestant. Actually, she went into exile in Mary’s own reign. But during the 30’s and 40’s, they gambled together. They played cards together. Katherine lent her horses.
So it would suggest that Mary at a personal level had a gift of friendship. There were a lot of people she spent time with. I think that’s something I’d like to research further. How she actually developed these different relationships with different factions in court.
Heather:
Great. Kind of wrapping up, I see you’ve got some stuff behind you. What is that?
Melita:
I have, yes. As you mentioned in the beginning, I’m the co-editor and founder of Tudor Times. Tudor Times as well as being a website which is devoted to the Tudors and Stuarts history, we also have a shop which we opened fairly recently. We’ve some very interesting I think, Tudor products which I have a few here.
I was going to hold this up as my coffee cup that I’ve been drinking out of. So we’ve got a range of quotes. I particularly like this one – “Your library is your paradise,” which is from Erasmus.
We’ve got postcards. It’s another good one from Thomas More – “Who loveth me, loveth my hound.” So for the dog lover in your life. Our most popular item is in fact the mug of Elizabeth I’s quote here –“I am a no morning woman,” which a lot of people agree with. Although actually Mary was morning woman. She was an early riser and liked to get up early.
We’ve got some greeting cards, postcards. We’ve also got some tote bags, mugs. This is in different patterns. This one is our newer pattern. So we’ve got a series of black and white patterns. A series of colored patterns. The colored patterns are based on Tudor gardens and the black and white are based on black and white architecture patterns.
Finally, we’ve got some calendars. This is a particular favorite. This is the Women’s Renaissance Calendar. This is a quote from Caterina Sforza – “Fortune helps the intrepid and abandons the cowards.” I particularly like here “No more tears now. I will think upon revenge,” which is a quote from Mary Queen of Scots. So these are all available from Shop.TudorTimes.co.uk.
Heather:
Wonderful. Great. We can also get your book on Amazon.
Melita:
Yes, it’s available on Amazon. It’s now available in hardback I believe Kindle will be available within the next week or two. But it’s also available on Shop.TudorTimes.co.uk.
If you buy it from the shop during the pre-order period, you’ll get a gift set of five quite complex family trees which were just too difficult to get into a book, which show how Mary was not just at the center of the English Royal family but also the European Royal families. Also how she interrelated with some of the English nobility.
She was particularly close to members of the Grey family which is obviously when you consider the events of 1553, it is perhaps surprising that she had quite a lot of close friends amongst the Grey family.
So if you purchase from Shop.TudorTimes.co.uk, you’ll get the family trees. Otherwise, of course, Amazon is always a good place to look for a book.
Heather:
Perfect. Well thank you so much for taking the time out to speak with us on this inaugural Tudor Summit. It’s been great. I love seeing this other picture of Mary emerging as well. So thank you for your research and thank you for sharing with us.
Melita:
Thank you.
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Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast, one of the longest running indie history podcasts, going since 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. She writes books, created the original Tudor Planner (a yearly diary filled with Tudor history) and in 2019 created the world's first Tudorcon (you can "attend" online this year!). She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 20 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history.