Mary Gray
Lady Mary Gray (* 1545 ; † April 20, 1578 in London ), married Keyes, was an English noblewoman and the youngest daughter of Lady Frances Brandon from her marriage to Henry Gray, 1st Duke of Suffolk . Through her mother she was a granddaughter of Mary Tudor , the younger sister of Henry VIII. She and her older sisters Catherine Gray and the Nine Day Queen Jane Gray were in the line of succession directly behind Mary I and Elizabeth I. Like her sister Catherine, she fell under Queen Elisabeth was out of favor due to a secret marriage and was imprisoned by her for years.
Life
Childhood and youth
Mary Gray was born in 1545 as the third surviving child to Frances Brandon and Henry Gray, Marquess of Dorset. That same year, her maternal grandfather, Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk, died . When her great-uncle Henry VIII died just a year later, he decreed in his will that after his own children Eduard , Maria and Elisabeth, the descendants of his sister Mary Tudor should inherit the throne. Thus Mary Gray and her sisters Jane and Catherine stood as granddaughters of Mary Tudor in the line of succession. Unlike Jane and Catherine, however, Mary did not grow normally and would later be the smallest person at court. Hence, some historians suggest that she suffered from short stature . Nothing is known about the attitude of their parents to their short stature. Nevertheless, at the time, noble dignities were closely linked to the external appearance, so that despite her royal blood, Mary was not seriously considered as heir to the throne.
Even so, Mary, like her sisters, received excellent education from tutors like John Aylmer. As an adult, Mary had a French and an Italian grammar, as well as John Foxe's Acts of Monument on Protestant Martyrs. Because of their faith, the three sisters were seen as a Protestant alternative to the Catholic Princess Maria when Eduard fell terminally ill. John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland and Lord Protector of England, proposed in 1553 that Mary's sixteen-year-old sister Jane should be married to his son Guildford Dudley and twelve-year-old Catherine should be married off to Henry Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke, in order to strengthen a Protestant alliance .
Appearances might unofficially exclude Mary from the line of succession, but she could theoretically give birth to healthy, royal children. Because of this, when she was only eight years old, she became engaged to a distant relative, Arthur Lord Gray of Wilton . Unlike the young bridegrooms of her sisters, Lord Gray was a middle-aged man and a battle-hardened soldier whose face had been severely injured in the war against the Scots. The engagement was dissolved shortly after the unsuccessful attempt to bring Jane to the throne of England. Queen Maria initially pardoned Mary's father because of Frances Brandon's intercession and also intended to spare Mary's sister Jane.
However, when Henry Gray participated in the Wyatt conspiracy against Mary's marriage to King Philip II of Spain in 1554 , he and his daughter Jane were executed as traitors. Mary's uncle, Lord Thomas Gray, also died on the scaffold for his part in the uprising. After the execution of her relatives, it was only thanks to her mother, Frances Brandon, that the family regained the Queen's favor. Both Mary and Catherine were called to court as so-called Maids of Honor , an English term for unmarried ladies-in-waiting . Her mother Frances was inducted into the Queen's Privy Chamber and also made Mary's best friend and cousin Margaret Willoughby a seat at court. Despite their Protestant beliefs, the Grays conformed to Mary's Catholic rule. After almost a year, Mary's mother married Adrian Stokes and withdrew from court life with Mary.
Secret marriage
After Elizabeth's accession to the throne, Catherine and Mary Gray were considered by many nobles to be the heirs of the Queen if she died childless. Elisabeth, however, had no interest in naming an heir to the throne during her lifetime and treated Catherine Gray in particular with cool and suspicious feelings. When Catherine's secret marriage to Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford came to light in 1561 , the angry Elizabeth locked the young couple in the Tower of London . In prison, Catherine had two sons in 1561 and 1563 and was eventually permanently separated and placed under house arrest from both her eldest son and her husband. Elisabeth feared that descendants of the Greysisters could pose a threat to their throne.
In 1564 Mary fell in love too. As her mother had done in her second marriage, Mary chose a man from among her own class. His name was Thomas Keyes and he was porter at court. A relative of the Knollys family, descendants of Mary Boleyn , he may also have been distantly related to Queen Elizabeth. Among other things, he was responsible for removing troublemakers and ruffians from the court. William Cecil described him as "the greatest gentleman at court" and Mary as "the smallest of them all". Though contemporaries described Mary as "hunchbacked" and "very ugly," it didn't stop the already widowed keyes in his forties from giving her jewelry and courting her. Perhaps Mary hoped that marriage below her status would be considered as safe as her mother's marriage to Adrian Stokes.
Her sister's example had shown Mary what would happen if she were to marry without the Queen's permission. But since Elisabeth was kept in suspense by parliamentary debates on Catherine Grey's rights and by the engagement of Mary Stuart to Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley , the couple finally decided to secretly marry in 1565. A favorable opportunity arose on July 16, 1565, when the Queen and part of her entourage attended the wedding of her relative Henry Knollys. In the presence of some witnesses, including her old friend Margaret Willoughby, Mary married Thomas Keyes at nine o'clock in the evening in his private chambers.
On August 21, the queen finally found out about the marriage. Since Elizabeth had only just learned of Maria Stuart's marriage to Darnley and saw her throne in danger, the illicit marriage of another royal relative posed an additional threat. William Cecil wrote in a letter to Lord William Howard: "The violation of the Queen's grace is grave and Her Majesty takes it to heart." Mary and her husband were separated and placed under arrest on the orders of the Queen.
Under arrest
While Thomas Keyes was thrown into Fleet Prison in London and had to endure the warden's abuse there, Mary was at least lucky enough to be placed under house arrest with a family friend. Sir William Hawtrey, High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire , brought her to his Checkers country estate and treated her as kindly as the conditions of detention allowed. Elisabeth forbade Mary to see her, and her time in the fresh air was limited. While in captivity, Mary wrote letters to Cecil asking that the Queen be appeased and forgiven. Keyes even agreed to have the marriage annulled if only he could be released from prison. But unlike Catherine Grey's marriage, this time there were witnesses for the wedding and the marriage could therefore not simply be annulled. On top of that, a new overseer was hired, who did not allow the tall Keyes to move outside of his tiny cell and also harassed him with poisoned food.
On August 7, 1567, Mary Gray was placed in the care of Katherine Willoughby . Katherine had been the last, very young wife of Mary's grandfather, Charles Brandon , and was thus Mary's grandmother by marriage. She was kind to Mary, but her inspection of Mary's household items caused one of her famous tantrums. Back then it was customary for household items to reflect the rank of owner, and as a member of the royal family Mary was entitled to a certain luxury. Katherine Willoughby was therefore stunned when she saw the state of Mary's things and wrote an outraged letter to her old friend William Cecil.
“She has nothing but an old feather bed, torn and full of patches, with no pillows or bedspread. Instead, two old pillows, one longer than the other, an old silk quilt that is so tattered that the cotton comes out and a pathetic little canopy made of red silk, hardly good enough as a curtain for the toilet. "
Katherine therefore asked Cecil for dishes and appropriate furniture for Mary and promised to "play the good housewives" with her. About the condition of her stepdaughter, she said:
"Although I am sure that she is glad to be with me, I assure you that she is deeply saddened and ashamed of her mistake in her behavior and actions - mainly because she had not seen me since, I believe - and that I haven't been able to get her to eat since she arrived. In these two days she ate little more than a chicken leg. I fear for her life and that is why I am all the more willing to write to you, since I believe that a little consolation will do her good. "
Only months later, on January 26, 1568, Mary's only remaining sister, Catherine Gray, died in captivity at the age of only twenty-eight. Thus, if it was up to the succession to the throne established by Henry VIII in his will , Mary was in the first place as Elizabeth's heiress. Relations between Elisabeth and Katherine Willoughby were strained, which may have been a reason for removing Mary from Katherine's household before she became a focus for disaffected Protestants. In June 1569 she was placed in the care of a new overseer, Sir Thomas Gresham, who, however, and his wife Anne complained bitterly to Cecil about the burden. Her husband was finally released that same year. He asked Archbishop Matthew Parker to mediate with the Queen "so that he might be allowed to live the law of God with his wife." But Elizabeth was tough.
The last few years
In 1571 Thomas Keyes died without ever seeing Mary again. Mary was heartbroken and asked the Queen's permission to raise Keyes' orphaned children as her own children. She was not allowed to do so, but at least her detention conditions have now been relaxed. Mary's portrait is from that year. The fact that she openly shows her wedding ring in the picture and now signed her letters with “Mary Keyes” is interpreted by some historians as a rebellion against her treatment by Elisabeth. Finally, in May 1572, Elisabeth released Mary after seven years of imprisonment, but refused her full share of her mother's inheritance. Instead, she paid her a modest living.
Mary spent the first few months at liberty with her stepfather Adrian Stokes and his new wife Anne Carew, daughter of Sir Nicholas Carew and niece of Francis Bryan . Anne Carew was an old friend of the Grays. She had known Mary since childhood and had represented Mary's eldest sister Jane Gray at a christening in her first marriage to Nicholas Throckmorton . In the company of her stepfamily, Mary recovered from her blows of fate and was finally able to start her own household in February 1573. She was still in correspondence with Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford , her sister Catherine's widower. Finally, on New Year's Day 1574, Queen Elizabeth was also more gracious and accepted a gift from Mary. In return for gold buttons, Elisabeth gave Mary a silver cup, an official sign that she had forgiven her. At the end of 1577 Mary was finally called back to Elisabeth's service as a lady-in-waiting.
Mary Gray died on April 20, 1578 at the age of 33 in London, presumably of the plague. In her will, drawn up three days before her death, she bequeathed the jewels she had inherited from her mother to Katherine Willoughby. Margaret Willoughby and Anne Carew were also considered by her. She left the place of her burial to Elisabeth, who chose Westminster Abbey . The funeral took place on May 14th, with the funeral procession led by Katherine Willoughby's daughter Susan Bertie. Mary was buried in the crypt of her mother, Frances Brandon, but did not have her own plaque.
literature
- Leanda de Lisle: The Sisters who would be Queen: Mary, Katherine, and Lady Jane Gray: A Tudor Tragedy . Ballantine Books 2009, ISBN 9780007219063
- Agnes Strickland : Lives of the Tudor Princesses including Lady Jane Gray and her Sisters . 1868 Longmans, Green and Co., London
- Philippa Gregory: Um Reich und Krone, das Erbe der Tudors 2 (Original title: The last Tudor), Rowohlt Paperback, September 25, 2018, ISBN 978-3-499-27460-2
- Elisabeth Fremantle: In the shadow of the queen (Original title: Sisters of Treason), Bertelsmann 2014, ISBN 3-570-10178-9
Web links
Individual evidence
- (De Lisle)
- Leanda de Lisle: The Sisters who would be Queen: Mary, Katherine, and Lady Jane Gray: A Tudor Tragedy. Ballantine Books 2009.
- (Strickland)
- Agnes Strickland : Lives of the Tudor Princesses including Lady Jane Gray and her Sisters . 1868 Longmans, Green and Co., London
- ↑ p. 262
- ↑ p. 265: "the offence to the queen's grace is very great, and her majesty taketh it much to heart"
- ↑ p. 264
- ↑ p. 278: "She hath nothing but an old livery feather bed, all to torn and full of patches, without either bolster or counterpaine, but two old pillows, one longer than the other, an old quilt of silk so tattered as the cotton of it comes out, such a piteous little canopy of red sarcenet as is scant good enough to cover some secret stool. "
- ↑ pp. 278-279
- ↑ p. 290
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Gray, Mary |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | English noblewoman, youngest sister of Lady Jane Gray |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1545 |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 20, 1578 |
| Place of death | London |