From Princess, to Queen, to Duchess
Mary Tudor (March, c. 1496; London, England - June, 1533; Suffolk, England) was an English princess, the third wife of King Louis XII of France and one of the two sisters of King Henry VIII. Mary was also the grandmother of Lady Jane Grey, who would become titular queen of England for nine days in 1553.
Mary’s father, King Henry VII, betrothed her to Archduke Charles —later Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V — in 1507. In 1514, however, political tribulations caused King Henry VIII to renounce such engagement and arrange a match between his beautiful, charming and yound sister and Louis XII, the sick and french monarch of 52. Since Mary was already in love with Charles Brandon, the first Duke of Suffolk, she made Henry promise that after Louis died she would be allowed to choose her next husband.
The marriage with the french king took place on Octouber of 1514, and Mary performed her role as wife and royal consort with kindness and dedication until he died on January of the following year. Before Henry or the new King of France, Francis I, could use her as a pawn in another political arrangement, Mary secretly wed Suffolk in Paris, probably in late February. Henry VIII was infuriated at the news, but eventually the pair regained the king’s favour, with Suffolk paying him a large sum of money and perhaps with the help and intercession of Cardinal Wolsey.Mary and Charles had four children, two daughters and two sons: ⇒ Henry Brandon (11 March 1516 – 1522); ⇒ Lady Frances Brandon (16 July 1517 – 20 November 1559), married to Henry Grey, 3rd Marquess of Dorset, and mother to Lady Jane Grey; ⇒ Lady Eleanor Brandon (1519 – 27 September 1547), married to Henry Clifford, 2nd Earl of Cumberland; ⇒ Henry Brandon, 1st Earl of Lincoln (c. 1523 – March 1534).
Mary had enjoyed unprecedented freedom during her teenage years at her brother's court. Just fourteen when her father, Henry VII died, she spent the next five years almost completely unchaperoned, encouraged to participate in every event, celebration and feast, each planned to display the opulence of the english royal family. She shared Henry's exuberance for spectacle and, for some time, was one of the central ladies of the court, admired and sociable. Like him, she loved dancing, masques, and parties; they were also very close, with the princess being the apple of the king's eye. It's rumored that Henry's famous warship, the Mary Rose, was named after both his favorite sister and his only daughter with Catherine of Aragon.
Upon her arrival in France, Mary was proclamed, by the Venetian Ambassador, to be "handsome and well favoured, grey-eyed; slight, rather than defective from corpulence, and conducts herself with so much grace, and has such good manners, that for her age of 18 years—and she does not look more—she is a paradise." She was particularly admired by her contemporaries for her long red hair, which she had inherited from the Plantagenet lineage through her mother, Elizabeth of York, who had also been an celebrated beauty.
After her second marriage, the Duchess of Suffolk lived a quiet life in the country, retired from court, although she had been know to have attended the famous Field of the Cloth of Gold at Guines, near Calais, in 1520. Often referred to as the French Queen, she was known to dislike Anne Boleyn and in defiance of her brother was to prove a firm supporter of her sister-in-law, Catherine of Aragon, in the matter of Henry VIII's annulment of his marriage to his first wife.
Mary visited London for the last time to celebrate the wedding of her eldest daughter, Lady Frances Brandon, to Henry Grey, Marquess of Dorset, in 1533. After suffering failing health for some years, Mary Tudor died on 25 June 1533 at the age of thirty-eight at Westhorpe Hall, Westhorpe, Suffolk, possibly of cancer. Henry VIII had requiem masses sung at Westminster Abbey for the repose of her soul and she was given a magnificent funeral, which her husband did not attend. Her body was interred at the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds. The Duke of Suffolk quickly remarried again, in that same year, to his fourteen-year-old ward, Katherine Willoughby (1519–1580), suo jure Baroness Willoughby de Eresby. Katherine had been betrothed to his eldest surviving son, Henry, Earl of Lincoln, but the boy was too young to marry, and Charles, to eager to add the heiress fourtune to his own.
