November 17, 1558: Death of Mary I, Queen of England and Ireland. Part I.

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Anne Boleyn, Cardinal Wolsey, Carlos I of Spain, François I of France, Henry VIII of England, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, Infanta Catherine of Aragon, Mary I of England, Mary Tudor, Pope Clement VII, Pope Julius II

Mary I (February 18, 1516 – November 17, 1558), also known as Mary Tudor, and as “Bloody Mary” by her Protestant opponents, was Queen of England and Ireland from July 1553 until her death in 1558.

Mary was born on February 18, 1516 at the Palace of Placentia in Greenwich, England. She was the only child of King Henry VIII and his first wife, Infanta Catherine of Aragon, to survive infancy. Her mother had suffered many miscarriages and stillbirths. Before Mary’s birth, four previous pregnancies had resulted in a stillborn daughter and three short-lived or stillborn sons, including Henry, Duke of Cornwall.

Mary was baptised into the Catholic faith at the Church of the Observant Friars in Greenwich three days after her birth.

Despite his affection for Mary, Henry was deeply disappointed that his marriage had produced no sons. By the time Mary was nine years old, it was apparent that Henry and Catherine would have no more children, leaving Henry without a legitimate male heir.

In 1525, Henry sent Mary to the border of Wales to preside, presumably in name only, over the Council of Wales and the Marches. She was given her own court based at Ludlow Castle and many of the royal prerogatives normally reserved for a Prince of Wales.

Vives and others called her the Princess of Wales, although she was never technically invested with the title. She appears to have spent three years in the Welsh Marches, making regular visits to her father’s court, before returning permanently to the home counties around London in mid-1528.

Throughout Mary’s childhood, Henry negotiated potential future marriages for her. When she was only two years old, Mary was promised to François, Dauphin of France, the infant son of King François I of France, but the contract was repudiated after three years.

In 1522, at the age of six, she was instead contracted to marry her 22-year-old cousin Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (King Carlos I of Spain). However, Charles broke off the engagement within a few years with Henry’s agreement.

Cardinal Wolsey, Henry’s chief adviser, then resumed marriage negotiations with the French, and Henry suggested that Mary marry the French king François I, who was eager for an alliance with England. A marriage treaty was signed which provided that Mary marry either François I or his second son Henri, Duke of Orleans, but Wolsey secured an alliance with France without the marriage.

In 1528, Wolsey’s agent Thomas Magnus discussed the idea of her marriage to her cousin King James V of Scotland with the Scottish diplomat Adam Otterburn. According to the Venetian Mario Savorgnano, by this time Mary was developing into a pretty, well-proportioned young lady with a fine complexion.

Although these various possibilities for Mary’s marriage had been considered, the marriage of Mary’s parents was itself in jeopardy, which threatened her status. Disappointed at the lack of a male heir, and eager to remarry, Henry attempted to have his marriage to Catherine annulled, but Pope Clement VII refused his request.

Henry claimed, citing biblical passages (Leviticus 20:21), that the marriage was unclean because Catherine was the widow of his brother Arthur, Prince of Wales (Mary’s uncle). Catherine claimed that her marriage to Arthur was never consummated and so was not a valid marriage.

Pope Julius II had issued a dispensation on that basis. Clement VII may have been reluctant to act because he was influenced by Emperor Charles V, Catherine’s nephew and Mary’s former betrothed, whose troops had surrounded and occupied Rome in the War of the League of Cognac.

From 1531, Mary was often sick with irregular menstruation and depression, although it is not clear whether this was caused by stress, puberty or a more deep-seated disease. She was not permitted to see her mother, whom Henry had sent to live away from court.

In early 1533, Henry married Anne Boleyn, and in May, Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, formally declared the marriage with Catherine void and the marriage to Anne valid. Henry repudiated the pope’s authority, declaring himself Supreme Head of the Church of England.

Catherine was demoted to Dowager Princess of Wales (a title she would have held as Arthur’s widow), and Mary was deemed illegitimate. She was styled “The Lady Mary” rather than Princess, and her place in the line of succession was transferred to Henry and Anne’s newborn daughter, Elizabeth.

Mary’s household was dissolved; her servants (including the Countess of Salisbury) were dismissed and, in December 1533, she was sent to join her infant half-sister’s household at Hatfield, Hertfordshire.

Mary determinedly refused to acknowledge that Anne was the queen or that Elizabeth was a princess, further enraging King Henry VIII. Under strain and with her movements restricted, Mary was frequently ill, which the royal physician attributed to her “ill treatment”.

The Imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys became her close adviser, and interceded, unsuccessfully, on her behalf at court. The relationship between Mary and her father worsened; they did not speak to each other for three years.

Although both she and her mother were ill, Mary was refused permission to visit Catherine. When Catherine died in 1536, Mary was “inconsolable”. Catherine was interred in Peterborough Cathedral, while Mary grieved in semi-seclusion at Hunsdon in Hertfordshire.

November 15,1498: Birth of Eleanor of Austria, Queen of Portugal and Queen of France

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Archduchess Eleanor of Austria, Carlos I of Spain, Felipe I of Castile, François I of France, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, Infanta of Spain, Manuel I of Portugal, Philipp of Austria, Philippe of Burgundy

Eleanor of Austria (November 15,1498 – February 25, 1558), also called Eleanor of Castile, was born an Archduchess of Austria and Infanta of Castile from the House of Habsburg, and subsequently became Queen consort of Portugal (1518–1521) and of France (1530–1547). She also held the Duchy of Touraine (1547–1558) in dower. She is called “Leonor” in Spanish and Portuguese and “Eléonore” or “Aliénor” in French.

Eleanor was born in 1498 at Leuven, the eldest child of Archduke Philipp of Austria and Infanta Joanna of Castile, who would later become co-sovereigns of Castile as King Felipe I and Queen Joanna. Her father was also Known as Philippe of Burgundy.

Archduke Philipp of Austria was also the son of the reigning Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I and his deceased consort Mary of Burgundy, while her mother was the daughter of the Catholic Monarchs; namely Fernando II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. Her siblings were Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (Carlos I of Spain), Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I, Queen Isabella of Denmark, Queen Mary of Hungary and Queen Catherine of Portugal.

She was named after her paternal great-grandmother, Eleanor of Portugal, Holy Roman Empress. After the death of her father in September 1506 Eleanor was educated at her aunt’s court in Mechelen.

When she was a child, Eleanor’s relatives tried to marry her to the future King of England, Henry VIII, to whom she was betrothed. However, when Henry’s father died and he became King, Henry decided to marry Eleanor’s aunt, Catherine of Aragon, who was the widow of King Henry’s older brother, Arthur, Prince of Wales.

Eleanor’s relatives also tried to marry her to the French Kings Louis XII or François I or to the Polish King Sigismund I, but nothing came of these plans. Eleanor was also proposed as a marriage candidate for Antoine, Duke of Lorraine, in 1510.

In 1517 Eleanor may have had a love affair with Friedrich II, Elector Palatine. Her brother King Carlos I of Spain who had succeeded their elderly grandfather King Fernando as King of Spain the year before, once discovered her reading a love letter from Friedrich. Charles forced Eleanor and Friedrich to swear in front of an attorney that they were not secretly married, after which he expelled Friedrich from court. She followed her brother to Spain in 1517.

Queen of Portugal

Eleanor married her uncle by marriage, King Manuel I of Portugal, after a proposed marriage with her cousin, the future King Jaôa III of Portugal, did not occur. Her brother Charles arranged the marriage between Eleanor and the King Manuel I of Portugal to avoid the possibility of Portuguese assistance for any rebellion in Castile. Manuel had previously been married to two of Eleanor’s maternal aunts, Isabella of Aragon and Maria of Aragon.

Manuel and Eleanor married on July 16, 1518. They had two children: the Infante Charles (born February 18, 1520 – April 8, 1521) and the Infanta Maria (June 8, 1521, and who was later one of the richest princesses of Europe). She became a widow on December 13, 1521, when Manuel died of the plague. As Queen Dowager of Portugal, Eleanor returned to the court of Charles in Spain. Eleanor’s sister Catherine later married Eleanor’s stepson, King Jaôa III of Portugal.

In July 1523, Eleanor was engaged to Charles III, Duke of Bourbon, in an alliance between Charles and Bourbon against France, but the marriage never took place. In 1526, Eleanor was engaged to King François I of France during his captivity in Spain.

Queen of France

Eleanor left Spain in the company of her future stepsons, who had been held hostage by her brother. The group met Francis at the border, and then departed for an official entrance to Bordeaux. She was married to Francis on July 4, 1530. Eleanor was crowned Queen of France in Saint-Denis on May 31, 1531. She was dressed in purple velvet at her coronation. They had no children.

Eleanor was ignored by François, who seldom performed his marital obligations and preferred his lover Anne de Pisseleu d’Heilly. At the official entrance of Eleanor to Paris, François displayed himself openly to the public in a window with Anne for two hours.

Queen Eleanor performed as the Queen ueen of France at official occasions, such as the wedding between her stepson Henry and Catherine de’ Medici in 1533. She also performed charity and was praised for this. She also took her stepdaughters, Madeleine and Margaret, into her household to raise them further.

As queen, Eleanor had no political power; however, she served as a contact between France and Emperor Charles. Queen Eleanor was present at the peace negotiations between Francis and Charles in Aigues-Mortes in 1538. In 1544, she was given the task of entering peace negotiations with Charles and their sister Mary of Hungary. In November 1544, she visited Charles in Brussels.

Later life

As a queen dowager, Eleanor left France for Brussels in 1548. She witnessed the abdication of Charles in October 1555 and left for Spain with him and their sister Mary in August 1556. She lived with her sister in Jarandilla de la Vera, where they often visited their brother, who retired to a monastery nearby. In 1558, she met her daughter Maria in Badajoz for the first time in 28 years. Eleanor died in 1558 on the return trip from Badajoz.

François III, Duke of Brittany and Dauphin of Viennois

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Anne of Brittany, Carlos I of Spain, Claude of Brittany, Dauphin of Veinnois, Felipe II of Spain, François I of France, François of Brittany, Henry VIII of England, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, Mary I of England, Treaty of Madrid

François III (February 28, 1518 – August 10, 1536) was Duke of Brittany and Dauphin of Viennois. He was the first son of King François I of France and Duchess Claude of Brittany, the eldest daughter of King Louis XII of France and Duchess Anne of Brittany.

Life

François I said of his son at birth, “a beautiful dauphin who is the most beautiful and strong child one could imagine and who will be the easiest to bring up.” His mother, Claude, Duchess of Brittany, said, “tell the King that he is even more beautiful than himself.” The Dauphin was christened at Amboise on April 25, 1519. Leonardo da Vinci, who had been brought to Amboise by François I, designed the decorations.

One of the most researched aspects of the Dauphin’s short life is the time he and his brother Henri (later King Henri II of France) spent as hostages in Spain. The king had been badly defeated and captured at the Battle of Pavia (1525) and became a prisoner of Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, (King Carlos I of Spain) initially in the Alcázar in Madrid. In order to ensure his release, the king signed the Treaty of Madrid (1526). However, in order to ensure that François abided by the treaty, Charles demanded that the king’s two older sons take his place as hostages. François agreed.

On March 15, 1526, the exchange took place at the border between Spain and France. François almost immediately repudiated the treaty and the eight-year-old Dauphin and his younger brother Henri spent the next three years as captives of Charles V, a period that scarred them for life.

The Dauphin’s “somber, solitary tastes” and his preference for dressing in black (like a Spaniard) were attributed to the time he spent in captivity in Madrid. He also became bookish, preferring reading to soldiering.

Marriage arrangements

As first son and heir to a king of France the Dauphin was a marriage pawn for his father. He could not be wasted in marriage, as many felt his brother Henri had been with his marriage to Catherine de’ Medici, and there were several betrothals to eligible princesses throughout the Dauphin’s life.

The first was when he was an infant, to the four-year-old Mary Tudor (later Mary I of England), daughter of Henry VIII of England and Catherine of Aragon; this arrangement was made as a surety for the Anglo-French alliance signed in October 1518, but abandoned around 1521 when Mary was instead betrothed to Charles V. Mary I of England would eventually marry Charles V’s son, King Felipe II of Spain.

Duchy of Brittany

In 1524, the Dauphin inherited the Duchy of Brittany on his mother’s death, becoming Duke François III, although the Duchy was actually ruled by officials of the French crown. The Duchy was inherited upon the death of François III by his brother, Henri; upon Henri’s succession to the French throne in 1547, the Duchy of Brittany and the Crown of France were merged, the Breton estates having already tied the succession of the Duchy to the French crown, rather than to the line of succession of the Dukes of Brittany, by vote in 1532.

Death

The Dauphin Francis died at Château Tournon-sur-Rhône on August 10, 1536, at the age of eighteen. The circumstances of his death seemed suspicious, and it is believed by many that he was poisoned. However, there is ample evidence that he died of natural causes, possibly tuberculosis. The Dauphin had never fully recovered his health from the years spent in damp, dank cells in Madrid.

After playing a round of tennis at a jeu de paume court “pré[s] d’Ainay”, the Dauphin asked for a cup of water, which was brought to him by his secretary, Count Montecuccoli. After drinking it, François collapsed and died several days later. Montecuccoli, who was brought to the court by Catherine de’ Medici, was accused of being in the pay of Charles V, and when his quarters were searched a book on different types of poison was found. Catherine de’ Medici was well known to have an interest in poisons and the occult. Under torture, Montecuccoli confessed to poisoning the Dauphin.

In an age before forensic science, poison was usually suspected whenever a young, healthy person died shortly after eating or drinking. There was no way to pinpoint and trace the substance after death; therefore, it was considered a quick, easy and untraceable form of homicide. There have been several other suspected cases of political-murder-by-poison in the French royal family through the ages.

January 22, 1522: Birth of Charles II of Orléans

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Archduchess Anna of Austria, Charles II of Orleans, Duke of Orleans, François I of France, Henri II of France, Henry VIII of England, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, Infanta Maria of Spain, Pope Clement VII

Charles II of Orléans (January 22, 1522 – September 9, 1545) was the third son of François I and Claude of France. Claude was a daughter of King Louis XII of France and his wife the Duchess Regnant Anne of Brittany.

From his birth until the death of his oldest brother François, Dauphin of France (François I’s eldest son), in 1536, Charles was known as the Duke of Angoulême. After his brother’s death, he became Duke of Orléans, a titled previously held by his surviving brother Henri, who had succeeded François as Dauphin and would later become King of France as Henri II.

By all accounts, he was the most handsome of François I’s sons. Smallpox made him blind in one eye, but it seems that it was not noticeable. He was known for his wild antics, his practical jokes and his extravagance and frivolousness, which his father approved of wholeheartedly.

He was, by far, his father’s favorite son. In addition, he was popular with everyone at his father’s court, and it was widely believed that the French nobility of the time would have much preferred to have him as the Dauphin as opposed to his downcast brother, Henri, who never seemed to recover from his years of captivity in Spain.

In 1540 he was granted the title of Count of Clermont.

In 1542, François I and Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, again went to war against each other. Charles fought and captured Luxembourg, but then fearful that he would miss the glory of Perpignan, which was under siege by the Dauphin Henri, he headed south. Luxembourg was lost and retaken several times during the war.

In January 1535, Henry VIII offered a betrothal between the 1-year-old Princess Elizabeth and the 12-year-old Charles on the condition that François I would persuade Pope Paul to reverse Pope Clement VII’s ruling on his marriage to Anne Boleyn as illegitimate.

However, François was reluctant to recognize Henry’s marriage to Anne because that would force him to question the Pope’s ruling. More importantly, François was worried about Elizabeth’s legitimacy despite Henry’s assurance that she was his heiress presumptive.

François stated that he would agree to the match only if Henry would agree to discontinue the annual pensions that François paid to England under the Terms of the Treaty of Amiens as part of Elizabeth’s dowry.

Henry was offended, and he stated that he had been generous in offering an heiress “of most certain title, without remainder of querel to the contrary” to a younger son. English and French commissioners met at Calais to discuss the terms of the marriage treaty, but they failed to reach a consensus because Henry insisted that Charles come to England until his marriage.

François refused to send his son to be a hostage to England. By July, the marriage negotiations came to a halt. In May 1536, Anne Boleyn was executed and Elizabeth was declared illegitimate, permanently ending any prospects of a marriage to Charles.

On September 19, 1544, the Treaty of Crépy was signed. Charles had a choice to marry one either Charles V’s daughter or paternal niece. Infanta Maria of Spain was the daughter of Emperor Charles V and Isabella of Portugal, and she would bring the Netherlands or the Low Countries of Franche-Comté as her dowry.

Archduchess Anna of Austria was the daughter of Ferdinand I, King of Hungary and Bohemia and Anna of Bohemia and Hungary, and she would bring Milan as her dowry. As the groom’s father, François I agreed to endow Charles with Angoulême, Châtellerault, Bourbon and Orléans.

The Peace of Crépy deeply offended Charles’ elder brother, the Dauphin Henri, and his wife, Catherine de’ Medici. As the heir of Valentina Visconti, Henri considered Milan to be his birthright. More importantly, this settlement would make his brother Charles as powerful as a monarch and link him by marriage to Emperor Charles V, which would divide French interests and create a strategic nightmare.

Many historians believe that Charles V hoped to use Charles as an adversary against Henri. Henri wrote a secret denunciation of the pact because it gave away three inalienable Crown properties.

Death

The rivalry between Charles and his brother, the Dauphin Henri, was potentially dangerous. However, it solved itself with the death of Charles. In the autumn of 1545, Charles was on his way (with his brother, the Dauphin) to Boulogne, which was under siege.

On September 6, they came across a cluster of houses that had been emptied and sealed off “from the plague”—probably a form of influenza. Stating that “no son of a King of France ever died of plague”, Charles entered some of the infected houses with his brother. Laughing, he slashed at bedding with his sword and started a pillow fight with some of his traveling companions.

Stories have also been told of him (on a dare) lying down on one of the infected beds and rolling around on the bedding. Later that evening, after dining with his father and brother, he took suddenly ill, suffering from pain, a high fever, vomiting and shaking limbs. Dauphin Henri rushed to his sickroom immediately, but was barred from entering, being physically restrained on three occasions.

Charles died on September 9, 1545. Some thought that he had been poisoned, but most agreed that it was the “plague” that killed him. He is buried next to his father, François I and his brother, the Dauphin François at the Abbey of Saint-Denis.

During his funeral, the new King Henri II wept for Charles even though his friend, François de Scépeaux, argued that Charles “never loved or esteemed you.”