The Tudor Brandons by Sarah-Beth Watkins

Author:Sarah-Beth Watkins [Watkins, Sarah-Beth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-78535-333-8
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
Published: 2016-06-23T16:00:00+00:00

Mary retired from the court soon afterwards. Reluctant to leave, it was time for her to withdraw for the birth of her next child but she decided to visit Walsingham Priory before her confinement. Going into labour en route, Mary had to stop at Hatfield House where she gave birth to her daughter Frances on 16 July 1517. Her christening was held two days later at the local parish church. The chosen godmothers, Queen Katherine and the infant Princess Mary were unable to attend due to such short notice but Ladies Boleyn and Grey stood in their stead with around eighty others present. Although it wasn’t as grand an affair as it was for little Henry’s birth, Frances was still welcomed into the world with a christening befitting a child of royal blood.

The sweating sickness had been a constant presence in the city during the past months and Mary continued on to Westhorpe to breathe in the country air and keep her new baby away from the noxious disease. While Charles travelled to and fro from court, Mary wintered in Suffolk with her household now swelling with children. She didn’t return to court until the Easter of 1518 when the king invited her to Abingdon. Still worried by illness in the city, the court moved to outer lying residences in Woodstock and Ewelme in Oxfordshire and Bisham in Berkshire, but at Woodstock, Mary became ill with a fever – perhaps a mild version of sweating sickness – and it delayed the courts departure to Ewelme. Charles wrote to Wolsey apologising for the delay ‘for, Sir, it hath pleased God to visit her with an ague, the which has taken her Grace every third day four times very sharp, but by the grace of God she shall shortly recover’12 and assured him that court physicians were in attendance to help ease her pain.

Wolsey had stayed in the city, fighting off several bouts of the sickness himself, working towards his universal peace agreement. The French side of the negotiations revolved around the captured town of Tournai that Francis still wanted to reclaim. It was Wolsey’s bargaining chip but when he was informed of a rumour that Charles had told French ambassadors that they could have Tournai back, he was furious. There was far more to the negotiations than that, the Princess Mary’s betrothal to the Dauphin, for one. Charles and Wolsey had a working relationship or really one that worked when Charles didn’t interfere too much with Wolsey’s policies.

Pace, the royal secretary, wrote to Wolsey:

‘The Duke of Southfolke arrived here yesternight, and this morning he did speak with me very effectually of one the same matter which I have declared unto your grace in time past, viz. of faithful amity to be established between your grace and him, confirming with solemn oaths, in most humble manner, the most faithful love and servitude that he intendeth to use towards your grace during his life in all manner of cases touching your honor. And

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