On this day July 25, 1554, Queen Mary Tudor married Philip of Spain, the son of Mary’s first cousin, Emperor Charles V. It was a marriage which would sadly lead to heartbreak and misery for Mary, but she embarked upon it with hope in her heart and stars in her eyes.
Mary had once been betrothed to Charles when she was a young girl. Her father, Henry VIII, had arranged the match, and her mother Catalina de Aragon, had strongly supported it, since Charles was the son of her sister, Joanna and it would strengthen the ties England had to Spain, and defend against their mutual enemy, the French.
Unfortunately, alliances shifted, and Charles married elsewhere. Henry VIII annuled his marriage to Mary’s mother, Catalina, and married Anne Boleyn, who supported the French.
Mary’s life was very difficult after that point. She refused to recognize her parents had never been legally married and that she was a bastard, ineligible to inherit the throne. Her father treated her with increasing cruelty in order to force her to accept it.
He wouldn’t allow Mary to marry out of fear a powerful husband could support an uprising in her name. The years of Mary’s youth slipped away, and undoubtedly, her father’s abuse left deep psychological scars. Her mother’s family on the Continent urged her to remain strong and refuse to surrender her claim to the throne.
But Mary finally broke down under the brutal treatment after her mother’s death and Anne Boleyn’s execution. She’d thought Anne Boleyn was the one forcing her father to treat her this way, but it only got worse after Anne was gone.
Mary signed the statements her father demanded, recognizing her illegitimacy and her father as head of the English church, but their emotional relationship was never restored. Mary was never again the pampered “pearl” of her father’s kingdom. The loving father she remembered from her youth was long gone. Later, Henry would restore Mary to the succession with an act of Parliament, but he never restored her legitimacy.
After Henry VIII’s death, Mary’s Protestant brother, Edward VI took the throne. While he was never cruel to his sister, there was tension between them because of their religious differences. Mary would not renounce her Catholic faith. Edward tried to leave his throne to Jane Grey, but the people supported Mary, the next rightful heir according to the Act of Succession.
As soon as she took the throne, Mary began to look for a husband, though she assured the people she would never choose a husband who would harm the nation and would rather remain unmarried than bring trouble to her beloved people. Her natural first choice was to turn to her own family on the Continent, the people who had always supported her during those horrible years of her father’s abuse. Charles VI suggested his son, Philip.
The English were somewhat alarmed by the possibility. Mary was the first queen regnant, and there was a lot of concern over what marriage would mean for her reign. As a woman, she would naturally have to obey her husband, and as a queen, that would mean England would be effectively under Philip’s rule. There was also concern over the religious aspects. Mary had brought England back into the Papal fold, and the English worried that Philip might bring the Spanish Inquisition when he came.
A marriage treaty was created that limited Philip’s power. Though he would be “king” of England, his reign would only last as long as Mary’s did. He would not be permitted to take his wife or children from the kingdom without the approval of Parliament. Most of the authority was reserved for Mary, though acts would be issued jointly in their names, and they would open Parliament together.
Philip appears to have been unhappy about these concessions, but he agreed to obey his father’s wishes and marry the woman he’d always called his “aunt.”
The Wyatt Rebellion was the first - but not the last - rebellion Mary would have to face in opposition to her marriage. Wyatt stated that he had “taken up arms solely for love of his country, not to harm the queen, but to hinder this marriage, lest Spaniards, who are arrogant and indeed wanton men, should reduce the English nation to a base slavery, from which they shrink far more than from death.”
Despite these challenges, Mary was very excited about the marriage. She seems to have been half in love with her husband before he even set foot in her realm. Perhaps she was in love with the idea of being married itself and the future she envisioned she was creating.
Mary thought her reign was setting things right again in England, restoring the kingdom to that golden age she remembered as a child, when her parents had been happy, and the realm had been united in the Catholic faith, before Anne Boleyn had come along and ruined everything. She anticipated personal happiness in her marriage, and hoped she would give the kingdom heirs, so that her Protestant sister would not come to the throne after her and undo all of the progress she had made.
She was thirty-seven years old, but her friends assured her she could still have children, even bringing to meet her a peasant woman over forty who’d recently had a child. Though she’d had irregularities in that regard all her life, the queen still menstruated and was thought to be fertile.
Philip wasn’t quite as enthusiastic about the union, but he was willing to do his duty and obey his father. He was only twenty-seven, ten years younger than his bride, and he didn’t speak her language. Mary had learned Spanish as a child from her mother, but it had been so many years since she heard it that she was uncertain about speaking it. The couple communicated in Latin, instead.
Philip was polite and courteous to Mary when they met, but his courtiers mocked the queen in their letters home, saying that Mary was “… not pretty, not at all, is low, flabby structure instead of fat … has no eyebrows, [and] she dresses very badly.”
Mary’s taste in clothing led to another minor incident that must have hurt her feelings. Soon after they met, Mary sent Philip a surcoat to wear for their wedding banquet. It was made of cloth-of-gold (thin gold wire twined around thread and woven into cloth) with designs of Spain’s symbol of pomegranates and England’s symbol of roses made from seed pearls and gold beads. It had eighteen diamond buttons. He did not wear it. Mary must have been very hurt, but she said nothing. Years later, it was included in an inventory of Philip’s clothing. He made a note in the margin beside it: “This was given to me by the queen for me to wear on our wedding day in the afternoon, but I do not think I wore it because it seemed to me ornate.”
Mary’s father had always conducted his weddings in private, but Mary intended her own wedding to be very visible. She chose to have it at Winchester Cathedral, and a special stage was built so that all of the attendees could see it.
There were some interesting examples of gender reversal in the wedding. Mary had a sword of state borne before her as she walked toward the chapel; Philip, though elevated just before the ceremony to King of Naples so his title would be equal to his wife’s, did not. Mary was seated on the right side, and Philip on the left, where the consort was usually seated. (During the ceremony, a sword of state was quickly procured for Philip so he would have one as they were led out of the church to their banquet.)
He tried to be kind to his wife, but this was not a love match for Philip. “The Queen is a lady of quality, but older than we thought, but his Highness is behaving so well and gives so many gifts that I’m sure both will be very pleased with each other, the king is trying to be as friendly as possible, he believes that his marriage was not made for flesh, but for the restoration of this area and preservation of those states.“
He was attentive to her and Mary was deliriously happy in those early days, though Philip made no secret of his desire to go back home to his own realm. Mary didn’t want him to go.
The marriage was not a popular decision, and her sister Elizabeth’s decision never to marry may have had a great deal to do with watching what happened after Mary’s marriage. Simply put, the kingdom started to fall apart. Rebellions and riots against foreigners increased and seemed to get worse once Mary made the decision to burn Protestants who refused to return to the Catholic fold. Then, a series of bad harvests led to famine and plague.
Mary had a false pregnancy about three months after the wedding. Today, scholars believe it was the first signs of the ovarian cancer that would end up killing her, but a the time, Mary gave all signs of being pregnant. Her belly swelled, and her breasts leaked milk. She thought she felt the child move within her. Mary was overjoyed, believing that God had blessed her reign.
Philip decided to stay during Mary’s pregnancy. If she died in childbirth - as most people quietly expected would be the outcome - her child would be the king or queen of England and Philip would want to make sure he had custody of the baby when that happened. He couldn’t take the baby from England, but he could ensure it was raised in a way that was favorable to his interests.
But the time for the birth came and went with no signs of her going into labor. Mary’s psalter still exists, and when the book is stood on its spine, it falls open to the page which contains prayers for women in labor. The page is stained with the tears Mary shed while praying for the safe delivery of her child.
The doctors kept pushing back the date for the birth, but then the swelling began to shrink, and Mary finally had to accept there was no baby on the way. She emerged from her confinement chamber, humiliated and heartbroken.
Philip left not long after that to return to his kingdom on the Continent, and Mary had a devil of a time convincing him to return to her side. Reportedly, she spent hours in darkened rooms, weeping for him, and the letters she sent to him pleading for him to come back to her were stained with tears. Philip kept putting her off with excuses. He needed to wait until after his father’s abdication for his coronation. Then he needed to visit his new realms, and make sure everything was settled.
Once Mary involved England in Philip’s foreign wars, her council grew fractious, and she could barely keep control of them. Worse, England’s involvement drained the treasury and cost England its last bit of territory on the continent, Calais.
When Philip did return, he brought with him a woman many thought was his mistress. Mary refused to house the woman in chambers near her own or the king’s and it was a minor scandal. Soon after his return, Mary believed she was pregnant again, but Philip doesn’t seem to have believed it. He decided to leave England for his own realm, leaving behind his anguished wife. Mary went into confinement, expecting the birth in February of 1558, but went through another long, sad wait when labor didn’t commence.
On March 30, Mary wrote her will. She insisted in it she believed herself to be pregnant, and left her throne to that child, directing that her beloved husband raise the baby and bequeathing him the love of her subjects, which she felt was the most important thing of all. She now had to face the fact that she’d never see him again, this man in whom she’d invested so many hopes and dreams only to see them all crumble to ashes.
By summer of 1558, Mary’s second pregnancy had quietly faded away. She amended her will in light of that, directing that her throne be passed down as the law dictated, unable at this last to write the name of her sister. She died that November, brokenhearted and alone as her courtiers deserted the palace to flock to the side of her sister, the heir Mary had hoped to disinherit with her own children.
After her death, Philip wrote he felt "reasonable regret” for her loss.
