CHAPTER 5
As concerning the bringing up of her, if he [King Henry, her father] should seek a Mistress for her to frame her after the manner of Spain, and of whom she might take example of virtue, he should not find in all Christendom a more mete than she now hath, that is to say, the Queen’s grace, her mother, who is cometh of this house of Spain and who, for the affection she beareth to the Emperor, will nourish her, and bring her up as may be hereafter to his most contentment.1
—CUTHBERT TUNSTALL, BISHOP OF LONDON, AND SIR RICHARD WINGFIELD, ENGLISH AMBASSADORS TO THE EMPEROR, JULY 8, 1525
MARY WAS NOW TO BE EDUCATED AS THE FUTURE WIFE OF THE emperor and, if she remained sole heir to Henry’s crown, queen of England. While it was a prospect that Henry was reluctant to accept, Katherine shared none of Henry’s qualms about her daughter’s right to succeed and the ability of women to govern. Her mother, Isabella, had ruled as queen of Castile and refused to yield to pressure to alter the Castilian laws that permitted her eldest daughter to succeed her. She had asserted her equality with Ferdinand in their roles as the “Catholic Kings” but had also acknowledged the importance of her role as dutiful wife and mother. For Katherine, female sovereignty was compatible with wifely obedience and there was no good reason why Mary should not succeed her father. Katherine was determined to prepare her daughter for rule.
In this she drew on her own education and experience. She consulted leading scholars and commissioned educational treatises to advise on Mary’s program of instruction. Desiderius Erasmus, the great Dutch humanist, had produced the Institutio Principis Christiani (Institution of a Christian Prince) in 1516, but there was no similar guide for the education of a future queen regnant. Katherine requested the Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives to write such a manual for the education of girls. As Vives wrote in his dedicatory letter of April 5, 1523, to his De Institutione Feminae Christianae (The Institution of a Christian Woman):
Moved by the holiness of your life and your ardent zeal for sacred studies, I have endeavoured to write something for your Majesty on the education of the Christian Woman … your daughter Mary will read these recommendations and will reproduce them as she models herself on the example of your goodness and wisdom to be found within your home. She will do this assuredly, and unless she alone belies all human expectations, must of necessity be virtuous and holy as the offspring of you and Henry VIII, such a noble and honoured pair.2
While asserting that women should be properly educated, De Institutione was traditional in expecting women to be man’s subjugated companions; their primary goals were virtue, domesticity, and chastity. Female education, Vives maintained, was preparation not for a public role but for the conventional occupations of wife and mother. As Vives explained, men would benefit from having educated spouses, as “there is nothing so troublesome as sharing one’s life with a person of no principles.” Since a woman “that thinketh alone, thinketh evil,” it was recommended that Mary be kept away from the company of men and be surrounded at all times with “sad, pale and untrimmed” servants.
Two lists, one of “good” books—predominantly Spanish and French—the other of libri pestiferi—noxious books—were recommended for Mary’s reading. Chivalric romances were to be avoided, as they were thought to incite women’s imaginations and corrupt their minds, given their moral frailty. Instead, Mary should read the Bible, particularly the Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, and Epistles, every morning and evening, together with the works of the Church Fathers and writers such as Plato, Cicero, and Seneca.3 Besides reading, Vives approved of the classical female recreations of spinning, needlework, and cooking, as all such activities put off the moral danger of idleness. He concluded that Mary should follow her mother in virtue, rather than her father to the throne.
But Vives’s treatise lacked detail, and in October 1524, Katherine commissioned Vives to write a more specific curriculum of study for her seven-year-old daughter. The resulting De Ratione Studii Puerilis (On a Plan of Study for Children) was dedicated to the young princess herself. It set out rules for the proper pronunciation of Greek and Latin, emphasized the desirability of learning things by heart, and refined the earlier list of selected reading. Here the recommended books were much more oriented toward governance, perhaps reflecting Vives’s tacit acknowledgment that Mary was destined to rule. She was to read Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, and the dialogues of Plato, “particularly those which demonstrate the government of the commonwealth,” together with Thomas More’s Utopia and Erasmus’s Institutio Principis Christiani.
Vives’s curriculum did allow for a few stories for Mary’s amusement, but they were carefully selected and focused heavily on the deeds of self-sacrificing women. Mary could read about the virtuous Roman matron Lucretia, who, after being raped by the son of Tarquin the Proud, stabbed herself to death; or about the patient Griselda, whose husband put her through endless trials to assure himself of her devotion. These were stories that taught “the art of life” and that Mary could “tell to others.”4 As Mary got older, Vives advised that Katherine revise her educational program more precisely: “Time will admonish her as to more exact details, and thy singular wisdom will discover for her what they should be.”5
GIVEN KATHERINE’S own intellect, much was anticipated of Mary. As Erasmus wrote to the queen in his Christiani Matrimonii Institutio, “Your qualities are known to us … we expect a work no less of your daughter Mary. For what should we not expect from a girl who is born of the most devout of parents and brought up under the care of such a mother?”6 Mary in fact proved to be a highly accomplished child. She was able to write a letter in Latin by the age of nine and at twelve translated the prayer of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Henry Parker, a literary noble, wrote in a later dedication to Mary, “I do well remember that scant you were twelve years of age but that you were so ripe in the Latin tongue, that rare doth happen to the woman sex, that your grace could not only perfectly read, write and construe Latin, but furthermore translate any hard thing of the Latin into our English tongue.”7
But Mary would also receive an education for life and rule that went beyond the strictures of Vives’s instruction. She proved to be precocious and talented and shared her father’s love of music. When at the age of two she heard the Venetian organist Dionysius Memo playing at court, she ran after him calling “Priest, Priest” and refusing to stop until he agreed to play more.8 By the age of four Mary was playing the virginals and would later win lavish praise for her lute playing. Like her parents, she liked to hawk and to hunt, and as a teenager she developed a love of gambling at cards: her privy purse accounts reveal numerous amounts lost in this way.9 Mary developed her own style, loved fine clothes and jewelry, and, eager to please, would happily dance and perform at court as foreign ambassadors sued for her hand.