Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 36.djvu/404

Mary of France lian's daughter. Henry and Margaret were to have met at Calais in the spring to discuss both subjects, but a dangerous illness forbade Henry's going thither, and the match between Charles and Mary was left to be settled by commissioners later in the year. A treaty for the marriage was accordingly signed at Calais, 21 Dec. 1507, by which Charles was to send representatives to England to make the contract in his name before Easter following, and was to marry her afterwards, when he reached the age of fourteen. Heavy penalties were attached to the breach of the engagement on either side, and the leading towns and nobles, both of England and of Flanders, became security for their payment. Next year, however, owing to another illness of Henry's, the proxy marriage was deferred till late in the year. A splendid embassy from Maximilian arrived in England in December, and at Richmond, on the 17th, the Sieur de Bergues, as proxy for Prince Charles, went through the marriage ceremony with Mary. An account of the magnificent reception of the ambassadors and of the ceremonial was printed at the time, both in Latin and in English (see Archizologia, xviii. 33. The English version has been printed by the Roxburghe Club, and a copy of the Latin is in the Grenville Library in the British Museum, entered in the catalogue under the head 'Carmelianus, Petrus '). On 21 Dec. Toison d'Or, king of arms, on behalf of Maximilian, delivered to Henry a very precious jewel, called the riche jleur de lis, as security for a loan of one hundred thousand crowns, the main object, as Maximilian con- fessed to his daughter, which induced him to consent to the marriage.

In 1509 Mary's father died, and her brother, Henry VII I, became king. Her grandmother, Margaret Beaufort [q. v.J, also dying the same year, bequeathed to her, as ' my lady Mary, prynces of Castill,' ' a stonding cupp of gold covered, garnesshed with white hertes, perles, and stonys,' of twenty-one ounces weight (Cooper, Memoir of Margaret, Countess of Richmond and Derby, p. 133). For some years it seemed as if the match between her and Charles was to take effect. Henry sent aid to Flanders against Gueldres, and Maximilian was so cordial an ally that in the war against France in 1513 he was content to serve under Henry as a private soldier. Nevertheless, in July, before Henry had crossed the Channel, there were rumours of intrigues among the Flemish nobles for accommodation with France, and breaking off' the marriage with Mary. But on 15 Oct., when Henry and Margaret of Savoy met at Lille, a new treaty was made between England and the emperor, in which it was agreed that the marriage should take place at Calais before 15 May 1514, prior to a joint invasion of France in the following summer. As the time drew near, however, there seemed no disposition to complete the match, and it turned out that the emperor had made a separate truce. Henry had been quite sincere on his side, and complained of the expense he had been put to about the marriage, while Mary had treasured a bad portrait of Charles, and was said to have wished for his presence ten times a day.

But the king, with Wolsey's aid, knew how to punish such duplicity. Peace was secretly arranged with France, and Louis XII, who had lost his queen in January, engaged to marry Mary. Sne was eighteen, and by all accounts exquisitely beautiful and graceful, while he was a broken-down man of fifty-two. Nevertheless, she solemnly renounced her contract with Charles on 30 July at the royal manor of Wanstead, and on 13 Aug. at Greenwich she allowed the Duke of Longueville, then a prisoner of war, to make a new one for her as proxy for Louis XII. The treaty for her marriage to the French king had been already signed at London on the 7th. On the 18th the proxy marriage took place, when the Duke of Longueviile represented her husband. On the 22nd she appointed the Earl of Worcester as her own proxv, to complete the contract in France, which he accordingly did at Paris on 14 Sept. (Rymer, xiii. 445, 1st edit.) Then, in that very month, she herself left London, and was accompanied by the king and court to Dover, where a considerable squadron was appointed to convey her across the Channel. Four of the chief lords of England, with four hundred barons and knights and two hundred gentlemen, and a train of eighty ladies, went along with her. She embarked at four in the morning on the 2nd. The fleet met with rough weather on the passage, and one of the vessels actually foundered, with some loss of life and valuables. Even her own ship ran aground in entering Boulogne harbour. Boats were lowered, and a gentleman named Sir Christopher Garnish had to wade in the water and carry her ashore in his arms. But Louis, who awaited her arrival at Abbeville, heard of her landing on the 3rd. She joined him there on the 8th, and the marriage was celebrated on the 9th, with a splendour which was only impaired by persistent rain (Venetian Calendar, ii. 208). The very next aay the whole of her English servants were dismissed, by order, as she suspected, of the Duke of Norfolk. She wrote to complain of