“From Hennworth, 20th September.
“Most devotedly and lovingly yours,
“Catherine the Queen K.P.”[250]
During the remaining three years of her father’s life, Mary was allowed to lead her own quiet, studious life in peace. She was held in very great consideration both at home and abroad; ambassadors were instructed after receiving their first audience of the King to visit “the most serene Queen Katharine Parr and the most illustrious Princess, the King’s daughter”.
Negotiations for her marriage still continued, but were nothing more than tactics of war to mislead the enemy, so long as the purpose served. Duke Philip of Bavaria had taken leave of her in January 1540, believing that he was soon to return and claim his bride. The Emperor considered the matter settled, and deep sympathy was felt for her at his court in Brussels. Granvelle thought, however, that the marriage must be suffered, provided she was made to consent to nothing against her religion, and he sent over yet another form of protestation to be used at the ceremony. In England it was even reported that she was already married to the Duke; and all these various comments were exactly what Henry wished to call forth, without pledging himself irrevocably, or having the least intention of concluding the treaty. While Mary was sadly resigned to her fate, and all Europe was pitying her, Henry was merely trifling with the German Protestants for political reasons. But the trifling was of a very solemn sort, and as late as 1546, a treaty was drawn up but never signed, between the Duke of Bavaria and the Lady Mary, in which it was provided that “the Duke shall transport the Lady within three months, the King to give the Duke 12,000 florins, in hands towards her transporting”.[251] It was also enacted that her dowry was to consist of 40,000 florins in gold, 20,000 to be paid on the day of her marriage, the rest at Frankfort a year later.
But yet another aspirant, the Duke of Holstein, came forward, and Henry played him off against Duke Philip, as he had played Philip off against the Emperor and Francis I., and his son, without of course any definite result.
At the age of twenty-eight Mary was still admired, although bad health, and trouble of mind had left their marks on a face, the beauty of which had been praised in such lavish terms. In 1544 the secretary of the Duke of Najera merely said of her, “The Princess Mary has a pleasing countenance and person. The dress she wore was a petticoat of cloth of gold and gown of violet-coloured three-piled velvet, with a head-dress of many rich stones.” It was in this year that she sat to the now unknown painter, for the portrait which has passed into the National Portrait Gallery. The somewhat hard outlines of the picture betoken a hand far less skilful than that of Holbein, who painted her earlier, or that of Sir Antonio More and Lucas Van Heere, who painted her later portraits. It will be observed that the style of dress resembles that of the more pleasing Oxford portrait, which must have been executed about the same time.
Henry’s various machinations were cut short by death, and Mary’s troubles were henceforth to take an entirely different form.
