Bloody Mary by Carolly Erickson

evilminded sheep,” his abuse was intended to echo Charles’ own view and to convey England’s readiness to support the emperor in his fight against the Lutheran rebels. Charles wasKatherine’s nephew, the son of her mad sister Joanna. He was Henry’s nephew by marriage, and in recent years Henry had been taking full advantage of his avuncular role to court an imperial alliance, inviting Charles to England and entertaining him lavishly. In features and temperament Charles fell far short of the handsome, chivalric image of monarchy dear to Henry’s heart, but his wealth and power more than made up for these shortcomings.
    Charles was an ill-favored man whose narrow blue eyes, lusterless white skin and enormous, disfiguring jaw and chin lent him a vaguely im-becilic air. He had bad teeth and a fragile digestion, and his lifelong habit of gross overeating gave him an expression indicative of perpetual indigestion. He looked best on horseback, where the severe plainness of his dress passed for understated magnificence and his face took on a heroic stubbornness. In the saddle he was convincing as the ruler of European lands significantly larger than those of France and nearly five times those of England. The extent of his subjects and wealth in the New World was only beginning to be estimated, but even leaving them out of account he controlled the financial center of Europe and his fleets and armies made him master of the continent. It was already apparent that Charles lacked brilliance and flair, but he was conscientious and shrewd. His bursts of activity were interrupted by long periods of listless depression during which no state business was conducted and courtiers and ambassadors wondered whether the emperor might slip into a permanent melacholy of the kind that imprisoned the wits of his mother. But then energy would return to his limbs and voice, and to the “greedy eyes” the Venetian envoy saw in his disconcerting face, and the emperor would again confront the task of administering his far-flung empire.
    In the fall of 1521 Charles’ energies were directed toward war with France, and Henry was supporting the imperial side of the conflict. Francis had returned to his preoccupation with surpassing Henry—now he was building a ship larger than Henry’s thousand-ton warship the
Great Harry—
and Wolsey was engaged in drawn-out negotiations of a betrothal between the young emperor and Mary. (The French betrothal had been set aside.) There was no doubt in Henry’s mind that the emperor’s forces would defeat the French, but the war news was not encouraging. Letters from France informed the king that the French were sweeping into the territories of the emperor, burning everything in their path and cutting off the fingers of little children as a warning of worse cruelties to come. 9
    In the midst of the fighting Charles visited England a second time, in June of 1522. London was prepared for his arrival as if for a royal coronation, with buildings along his route of entry newly painted and decoratedwith hangings, and pageants staged in several quarters of the city. Charles was greeted by the Lord Mayor and aldermen, and by a Latin oration from Thomas More. All the clergy of Middlesex were assembled to cense him as he rode past, and the members of every occupation and company stood together in their liveries. Two giants welcomed Charles and Henry to London, addressing them as “Henry defender of the faith, Charles defender of the church,” but most of the pageants made no allusion to religion and instead elaborated the themes of the English Order of the Garter and the imperial Order of the Golden Fleece, and the genealogical links between the two rulers. One representation was made in the shape of the island of England, surrounded with rocks and silver waves, and with its mountains and woods full of beasts and fish, trees and flowers. When the emperor passed this pageant the animals began to move, the fish to jump