Free The Other Tudors by Philippa Jones Page B

Bessie Blount; the gentlemen included the King, the Earl of Suffolk, Sir Nicholas Carew and Lord Fellinger, who was part of the Imperial diplomatic mission. At this time Bessie Blount became Henry’s mistress. She did not appear at the next performance on Twelfth Night, when the dancers represented Dutch citizens. The gentlemen were the same, but the ladies (Guildford, Carew and Fellinger) were joined by Jane Popincourt, who must have been an excellent dancer. 19
    At this point Jane Popincourt was already the mistress of the duc de Longueville. By September 1513, Henry had won the cities of Thérouanne and Tournai and his most prestigious captive, the duc de Longueville, had been brought back to England until a ransom could be negotiated and paid. Longueville was truly a noble captive; his great-grandfather, Jean du Dunois, known as the ‘Bastard of Orleans’, was the illegitimate half-brother of Charles, duc d’Orléans, the father of Louis XII. Both Charles and Jean were also the grandsons of Charles V of France.
    While at the English Court, Longueville took Jane Popincourt as his mistress. His rank, good looks and charm endeared him to the English Court, even to the Spanish Catherine, and his presence in England became particularly useful when Louis XII and Henry VIII decided to cement their alliance through the marriage of Louis to Henry’s sister Mary.
    This offer of marriage came at an opportune moment. In 1505, 11-year-old Mary had been betrothed to five-year-old Charles, Catherine’s nephew, then King of Castile and heir to the throne of Aragon and the Holy Roman Empire. Her marriage had been part of Henry VII’s political plan to form an alliance with the Spanish–Imperial faction. Henry VIII maintained this alliance, marrying Catherine and enjoying Imperial support in his French War. As the victory of Thérouanne was celebrated, it was agreed that Charles and Mary should be married by May 1514; by late 1513 Mary was ordering fabric to make gowns for herself and her ladies for their meeting with her promised husband at Calais early the following year. A list of Mary’s household officers was drawn up, furniture and plate assembled, and a magnificent wedding outfit ordered.
    Politics, however, is an unstable basis for planning such an event. Ferdinand of Aragon suddenly made peace with Louis XII, and then Emperor Ferdinand did the same. Henry was left alone to face France. The new Pope, Leo X, requested that Henry make peace with Louis; grudgingly Henry finally agreed. It seemed that the political scene was also to have an effect on Mary and Charles’s marriage; May came and went, and then the wedding was postponed to June due, it was reported, to Charles being ill. It became clear that some of Charles’s advisers no longer favoured the English marriage, as Henry and Ferdinand were no longer friends and allies. (‘The Council of Flanders answered that they would not receive her [Mary] that year, with many subtle arguments by reason whereof the perfect love between England and the Low Countries was much slaked.’) 20 As a result of this cooling in English–Imperial relations, Henry offered Princess Mary’s hand in marriage as part of his settlement with Louis XII, who leapt at the offer. Instead of demanding lands and one and a half million gold crowns for ending the war, Henry was prepared to sanction the wedding and settle for a payment of only 100,000 crowns.
    In July 1514 at Wanstead, Mary publicly repudiated her marriage with Charles, adding that it was of her own free will. Mary and Charles had been betrothed for six years and the agreed date for the wedding in May had been ignored by this time. Within a month she was promised to Louis and a letter had been sent to the Pope, indicating that all this was the Emperor’s fault.
    Longueville acted as the French King’s representative in the exceptionally swift negotiations. The 52-year-old Louis XII was gaining a young lady of 19 as his wife, one who