Mary I and her sister Elizabeth had little in common except their father: Henry VIII. Mary was a staunch Catholic, Elizabeth a devout Protestant. Mary was deeply conventional in her views of women and took a husband as soon as she ascended the throne, Elizabeth was determined never to marry and became the Virgin Queen of legend. Mary’s reign was brief and brutal, Elizabeth’s has been celebrated as one of the longest and most successful of any British monarch. They may have been opposites but the relationship between the two sisters would have a profound impact on the queenship of both.
At 4am on 18 February 1516, Catherine of Aragon was delivered of a daughter. The child might not have been the son that her husband Henry VIII so craved but she was at least healthy and, given Catherine’s experience of childbirth, that was something to be thankful for. A lavish christening was held three days later at the Church of the Observant Friars, attended by the highest-ranking members of the court. The king’s infant daughter was named Mary.
Mary enjoyed a pampered upbringing. As the king’s cherished only child she was “much beloved by her father,” according to the Venetian ambassador. She was fêted at court and proudly shown off to foreign ambassadors, who all praised her appearance and intelligence. Her long red hair was “as beautiful as ever seen on human head.” Gasparo Spinelli, a Venetian dignitary, told of how the little princess had danced with the French ambassador, “who considered her very handsome, and admirable by reason of her great and uncommon mental endowments.”
During her early years, Mary learned the typical courtly accomplishments of playing the lute and virginals, singing, dancing and riding. She also received an excellent education at the hands of Juan Luis Vives, a celebrated humanist scholar.
After a two-year sojourn in Wales Mary returned to court in 1527, aged 11. But by then everything had changed. For the past year her father had been obsessed with one of her mother’s ladies-in-waiting. Anne Boleyn was a fiery young woman who’d arrived from the French court in 1522. Having
