Free Mary Tudor by Linda Porter

her countrymen. They were the markers of daily life that had endured for centuries. Probably most people did not think about them too deeply and were not encouraged to do so.There was comfort in the familiarity of the great religious festivals and the processions that accompanied them, a kind of free entertainment for the ordinary people. All these holy days were observed in Mary’s household, which was untouched by any taint of religious controversy. There were undercurrents of discontent with the church in England, dismay at its power, wealth and worldliness and disgust at the ignorance and lax attitude of many parish priests. Mary knew little of this. Across the Channel, there was much more serious religious ferment, but it did not intrude into Mary’s upbringing. The countess of Salisbury, a devout woman herself, did not need to be told her duty.The princess’s spiritual development might be guided by her chaplains but behind them was Margaret Pole, the epitome of a Christian noblewoman, whose son Reginald, the future Cardinal Pole, had already committed his life to the Church. Mary did not really know this distant cousin then, but she would have heard about his progress from her lady governess, who was a proud mother.
    Mary is so closely identified, even today, with Roman Catholicism that it is difficult to disentangle the woman from her faith. Popular history books still refer to her as ‘the Catholic Queen’, implying that this was an impediment, an underlying flaw that may explain, but cannot condone, who she was. Yet nobody thought of her, during her childhood, as ‘a Catholic Princess’.What else would a princess of England be? Her own father had issued a learned broadside against the teachings of Martin Luther in 1521 and been awarded with the title of Defender of the Faith. In Mary’s early childhood, there was no irony in that. As she knelt before the priests of her household at mass, Mary would not have recognised herself as the pious practitioner of an old-fashioned, beleaguered creed.The religion that she followed was so much a part of her life that she probably did not dwell on it at all. It was the ritual she grew to love; the familiar cadences of the Latin, the superb, uplifting music, the colour and richness of the textures of robes and ornaments. Religion was beauty to Mary, a beauty that daily gave hope of eternal life. For at its centre was the miracle of the translation of the bread and the wine into the body and blood of Christ, a mystery that promised salvation to every soul. But her personal beliefs were unremarkable. Her father loved his mass as well, even when he had long since parted company with the rule of Rome. Mary was no different from her parents, her cousin the emperor or, in 1525, all but a small number of Englishmen who were beginning to be influenced by ideas from the nearby Continent. The worship of God was at the core of her life and would always be there.
    When she translated the Prayer of St Thomas Aquinas into English at the age of 11, while still in Wales, she saw it primarily as a school exercise, something to prove to her mother that the Latin was going well. The prayer may have been suggested by Fetherstone but it could have been her own choice. Given its sentiments, it is tempting to think that the princess may have thought, as her life unfolded, of the lines she had translated when the world revolved around her:
    Good Lord, make my way sure and straight to thee, that I fail not between prosperity and adversity, but that in prosperous things I may give thee thanks and in adversity be patient, so that I be not lifted up with the one, nor oppressed with the other … My most loving Lord and God, give me a waking heart, that no curious thought withdraw me from thee. Let it be so strong, that no unworthy affection draw me backward. So stable that no tribulation break it. And so free that no election by violence make any challenge to it. 15
     
    Religious practice was not