This biography, written by Johanna Strong, is shared with permission from Team Queens, an educational history blog run by a collective of historical scholars. All rights reserved; this material may not be republished without the author’s consent.
Born: 18 March 1496, United Kingdom
Died: 25 June 1533
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: NA
Mary Tudor was born on March 18, 1496, at Richmond Palace to Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. She was their second surviving daughter and from an early age learned French, likely Latin, and was proficient in singing, dancing, and musical instruments.
In 1514, Mary was promised in marriage to Louis XII of France, when she was 18 and he was 52. They were married on October 9, 1514, though Mary had persuaded Henry VIII that if she married Louis she should be allowed to choose her next husband. When Louis died less than 3 months after their marriage, she secretly married Henry’s good friend Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk, in March 1515.
Since this marriage hadn’t been approved by Henry VIII, Mary and Charles were forced to beg Henry’s forgiveness and promised monetary payments to him in return. Henry eventually forgave them and they were officially married in May 1515. Mary and Charles had 4 children together, though only Frances – future mother of Lady Jane Grey, the Nine Days’ Queen – and Eleanor survived to adulthood. Mary remained close to her brother Henry throughout her life, though this relationship was strained when Mary sided with Katherine of Aragon in the divorce proceedings in the late 1520s and early 1530s.
Even after her marriage to Charles Brandon, Mary was known as the Dowager Queen of France or the French Queen rather than by her title as Duchess of Suffolk. She died at Westhorpe Hall in Suffolk on June 25, 1533, at the age of 37. She was honoured with a requiem mass at Westminster Abbey on July 10 and was buried on July 21 at Bury St. Edmunds Abbey in Bury St. Edmunds. After the abbey was destroyed in the Dissolution of the Monasteries, her body was moved to St. Mary’s Church, where it remains today.
Recommended Reading
Erin A. Sadlack, The French Queen’s Letters: Mary Tudor Brandon and the Politics of Marriage in Sixteenth-Century Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)
“Mary, Queen of France”, Tudor Times, 2018. https://tudortimes.co.uk/people/mary-french-queen (including copyright of the photo of Mary’s tomb)
Mary Perry, The Sisters of Henry VIII: The Tumultuous Lives of Margaret of Scotland and Mary of France (Lebanon, Indianan: Da Capo Press, 2000)
Susan Abernethy, “Mary Tudor, Queen of France and Duchess of Suffolk”, The Freelance History Writer, 2012. https://thefreelancehistorywriter.com/2012/06/12/mary-tudor-queen-of-france-and-duchess-of-suffolk/