Date of birth of Mary, daughter of Henry VII of England

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Chris Phillips

Date of birth of Mary, daughter of Henry VII of England

Legg inn av Chris Phillips » 05 mar 2005 23:27:34

Last month there was an interesting discussion about the possibility that
Henry VII and Elizabeth of York had a son who was said to have been born
prematurely and died after the death of his sister Elizabeth in 1495.

One factor connected with this question is the date of birth of the next
daughter, Mary. A number of published sources say that Mary was born 18
March 1495/6. The article by David Loades in the new Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography says she was born in the first half of 1496, probably in
March (apparently following the original edition of the DNB, published in
1893).

Complete Peerage, on the other hand, gives the date as 18 March 1494/5 [vol.
12, part 1, p. 459], citing Mary Croom Brown, "Mary Tudor Queen of France",
pp. 2-3 (1911).

It seems that there's no difficulty about her birthday, 18 March, under
which her birth is recorded in "the Calendar prefixed to Queen Elizabeth of
York's Psalter in the Library of Exeter College, Oxford" according to Mary
Croom Brown (though apparently the same document is referred to by Maria
Perry in "Sisters to the King" (1998) as Mary's grandmother's Book of
Hours -
the Beaufort Hours - British Library, Royal 2 A XVIII).

The year is given as 1495 in the psalter, so that the date might naturally
be interpreted as 18 March 1495/6.

However, Mary Croom Brown (pp. 2, 3) argued that "the new fashion of
reckoning the year as beginning in January was already in use in private
documents", and adduced several other pieces of evidence to support the
alternative interpretation of 18 March 1494/5:

(1) A privy seal of Henry VII, which she transcribes as: "de Termino Paschae
anno xi regis nunc: Anne Skeron nutrici dominae Mariae l s. pro quarterio
unius anni finiti ad festum Sancti Johannis Baptistae ultim."

Anne Skeron, the nurse of the lady Mary, is paid for a quarter of a year
which finished at the feast of St John the Baptist [24 June] last.

Apparently this had previously been used in support of the March 1495/6 date
by Mrs Green, in "Lives of the Princesses of England", in the belief that
both the feast day and the preceding quarter fell in the 11th year of Henry
VII, and therefore in 1496 (it is one of two pieces of evidence cited by the
original DNB).

But Brown argued that, as the record dates from Easter Term 11
Henry VII (1496), the feast of St John the Baptist last must have been 24
June 1495, placing the birth around March 1494/5. If there's a flaw in this
argument, I can't find it.

(2) Brown adds that at the beginning of 1499 Henry refused to give his
daughter in marriage to the Duke of Milan because she was only 3 years old
[citing Calendar of State Papers Venice, vol. 1, 790]. If "the beginning"
implies before 18 March, this is consistent with the earlier date but not
the later.

(3) Brown also points out that when in 1514 the contract for her marriage to
Prince Charles of Castile was repudiated, Henry VIII stated in a letter to
the Pope that at her betrothal (17 December 1508) she had scarcely (vix)
attained the age of 13 years [citing Letters and Papers Henry VIII, vol. 1,
5319]. If she had been born in 1495/6, she would have been three months
short of her 13th birthday.

(4) In addition to Brown's evidence, later authors mention a letter written
by Erasmus in 1523, describing his visit to Eltham in the company of Sir
Thomas More (dated variously to the late spring or early
summer/autumn/winter of 1499), in which Mary was said to have been
aged 4 [P. S. Allen, ed., Opus Epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, vol. 1,
p. 6 (1906)]. (This is cited without comment in the original DNB, despite
its inconsistency with the date of birth suggested there.) But it's worth
noting the lapse of time before he recorded the visit in writing, and the
fact that he did apparently get the ages of two of the other children wrong
by a year.

Finally, to add to the confusion, Brown mentions that in 1514 an official
statement seems to have made that she was 16, as a counter to suggestions
that she was too old for Charles of Castile. Evidently this explains the
date 1498 given for her birth by Burke's Peerage (at least previously - I
don't know whether the error persists in the current edition).

We could wish the evidence to be clearer - for example, it would be nice to
have more information on Brown's claim about the use of 1 January in private
documents - but on the whole the case for 1494/5 seems stronger than that
for 1495/6 to me. In particular, I don't see any way round Brown's argument
that "24 June last" in a document dated Easter Term 1496 must refer to 24
June 1495, not 1496. If anyone can spot a flaw here, I'll be interested to
hear it!

As far as the ODNB goes, it seems to be an unfortunate case of information
from the first edition being accepted at face value, but the evidence
presented in the first edition being simulataneously suppressed. The lack of
any discussion is particularly unfortunate in view of the fact that, of the
modern biographies cited, Walter Richardson's ("Mary Tudor The White Queen",
1970) considers 1494/5 "more probable" than 1495/6, and Maria Perry's
("Sisters to the King", 1998) seems to follow Richardson, though Perry seems
a bit confused about dates (describing Perkin Warbeck's abortive landing at
Deal as shortly before Mary's birth, though it took place in July 1495).

The ODNB account does not refer to either Brown's biography of Mary or the
Complete Peerage article.

Chris Phillips

Chris Phillips

Re: Date of birth of Mary, daughter of Henry VII of England

Legg inn av Chris Phillips » 06 mar 2005 10:44:26

I wrote:
We could wish the evidence to be clearer - for example, it would be nice
to
have more information on Brown's claim about the use of 1 January in
private
documents - but on the whole the case for 1494/5 seems stronger than that
for 1495/6 to me. In particular, I don't see any way round Brown's
argument
that "24 June last" in a document dated Easter Term 1496 must refer to 24
June 1495, not 1496. If anyone can spot a flaw here, I'll be interested to
hear it!

Thinking about this a bit more, I should like to know more about the
accounting procedures. If Brown's interpretation is correct, it does seem
strange that the nurse's payment for early 1495 wasn't recorded until Easter
Term the following year.

I think this problem needs looking into a bit more before a conclusion can
be reached either way.

Chris Phillips

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