On One Of Her Visits To Court, [Mary] Heard The Venetian Organist, Dionysius Memo, Playing For Her Fathers

On one of her visits to court, [Mary] heard the Venetian organist, Dionysius Memo, playing for her father’s guests and ran after him calling, ‘Priest, priest!’ , not because she was interested in his religious role but to encourage him to play more. Henry was proudly indulgent of this slight lapse in his child’s otherwise dignified behavior. Her taste he could not fault, since it had been Henry himself who brought Memo, the organist of St. Mark’s, to England not long after Mary’s birth.

– The First Queen of England: the myth of ‘Bloody Mary’, Linda Porter

I find it weird when Katherine of Aragon biographers try to shoehorn in her being ‘Machiavellian’, like...I think she was politically gifted, I think she used her networks well, I think she knew when to be discreet, I think she knew how to utilize her public moments for public sympathy/approval (famously, like Blackfriars) but sometimes I feel like biographers apply this...weirdly, to private moments?

“The early sixteenth century was a time when prophecies were popular and prophets were confident: men and women puzzled over ancient rhymes which might (or might not) be held to have predicted such mighty topics such as the fall of Cardinal Wolsey, the split from Rome, and the dissolution of the monasteries. But no one ever predicted the King would marry six times and, if they had, he would not have believed it. Nor for that matter would any of his six queens have believed the various densities which lay in store for them, if predicted at birth: not one but two princesses were to die cast off; equally surprising, four women of modest enough birth were to become royal consorts; most astonishingly of all…two of these apparently unexceptional women were to die a traitor’s death.” Antonia Fraser, The Wives of Henry VIII.

Pictured in order: Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard, and Catherine Parr

The Tudors vs History: 21/?

“She was still holding out in the second week of June [1536], but becoming increasingly disturbed that she had received no reply to her letters to her father. On the first day of the month she had written to the king desiring his blessing and asking forgiveness ‘for all the offences that I have done to your grace, since I had first discretion to offend’. She was, she said, ‘as sorry as any living creature.’ […] She also congratulated him on his marriage and asked to be allowed to see the new queen.”

– The Myth of ‘Bloody Mary’, Linda Porter

“ Rejoices to hear of the marriage between his Grace and the Queen now being. Desires leave to wait upon the latter and do her Grace service. Prays God to send him a prince. Hounsdon, 1 June.”

– Princess Mary to [Henry VIII].  

“Henry VIII: June 1536, 1-5.” Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 10, January-June 1536. Ed.  James Gairdner. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1887. 424-440.     

“The relationship between Anne and Henry was always tempestuous. Her outspokenness and involvement in politics did not make her an easy spouse; there was a great deal of love but also a great deal of temper. And Anne, for all her declamations, was less confident than she seemed. There had been many attacks on her and she stood at the centre of a storm that showed no signs of abating.”

— Linda Porter

Beautiful artwork of Katheryn Howard and Jane Seymour by J. W. Wright and engraved by B Eyles.

I wish there was some of the other four wives, there’s an Anne Boleyn one, but it’s black and white.