Mary Tudor Quotes

I never thought it would end like this. I never thought he would leave me without saying goodbye.

Jane," I said quietly. She opened her eyes, she had been far away in prayer. "Yes, Mary? Forgive me, I was praying." "If you go on flirting with the king with those sickly little smiles, one of us Boleyns is going to scratch your eyes out.

I was born to be your rival,' she [Anne] said simply. 'And you mine. We're sisters, aren't we?

Oh yes. Draw your hem back from my mud, little sister.

When they launch snakes you'll have your namesake.

There are women that men marry and there are women that men don't," Anne pronouned. "And you are the sort of mistress a man doesn't bother to marry. Sons or no sons." "Yes," Mary said. "I expect your right. But there clearly is a third sort and that is the woman that men neither marry or take as their mistress. Woman that go home ...alone for Xmas. And thats seems to be you my dear sister. Good day.

Daniel, I did not knowwhat I wanted when I was agirl. And then I was a fool in every sense of the word. And now that I am a woman grown, I know that I love you and I want this son of yours, and our children who will come. I have seen a woman break her heart for love: my Queen Mary. I have seen another break her soul to avoid it: my Princess Elizabeth. I don't want to be Mary or Elizabeth, I want to be me: Hannah Verde Carpenter." "And we shall live somewhere that we can follow our belifs without danger," he insisted. "Yes," I said, "in the England that Elizabeth will make.

ARE WOMEN INHERENTLY LESS WARLIKE THAN MEN? Throughout history, women in power have used a rationale similar to men’s to send men to death with similar frequency and in similar numbers. For example, the drink Bloody Mary was named after Mary Tudor (Queen Mary I), who burned 300 Protestants at the stake; when Henry VIII’s daughter, Elizabeth I, ascended to the throne, she mercilessly raped, burned, and pillaged Ireland at a time when Ireland was called the Isle of Saints and Scholars. When a Roman king died, his widow sent 80,000 men to their deaths.29 If Columbus was an exploiter, we must remember that Queen Isabella helped to send him.

Well hear this,' she hissed in my ear. 'Hear this Mary. I am playing my own game and I don't want you interrupting. Nobody will know anything until I am ready to tell them, and then they will know everything too late.' 'You're going to make him love you?' Abruptly she released me and I gripped my elbow and arm where the bones ached. 'I'm going to make him marry me.' she said flatly. 'And if you so much as breathe a word to anyone, then I will kill you.

I remember Maman once saying of the old Queen that power corrupts. I have thought much on it and it seems to me that it is not power that corrupts, but the fear of its loss," she pauses with a sigh. After all Mary and Elizabeth Tudor were just girls once, not so different from my sisters, or any other girls, for the that matter. It is fear that changed them.

I recognise no Queen but my mother. But if the King's Mistress would intercede with the King on my behalf, then I would be grateful.

Anne would put on her head after receiving the title of Marchioness of Pembroke.

If you are wise, you will never forget that your heart is yours alone. It can be the greatest gift, but never can it be commanded.

Mary had the solitary and heroic half-virtue of the Tudors: she was a patriot. But patriots are often pathetically behind the times; for the very fact that they dwell on old enemies often blinds them to new ones.

Spuneai ceva? Spuneai ceva? Spuneam ceva? Se pare. Şoptisei, poate, o-ntrebare, Sau, poate, un răspuns. Dar glasul nostru nu era ascuns? Poate zăream o şoaptă în pleoapa tremurată. A fost atunci? Acum e altădată? Şi tu şi eu tăcusem parcă ani întregi Ştiind că nu-nţelegem ce-ncepi să înţelegi. Zadarnica paradă a tâlcurilor scrise, În jocul de-a sfiala, amuţise. Nu vream să ştim ce suntem, ce am fi fost sau cine. Tu mă numiseşi "Ţie", eu te numisem "Tine". Să te cunosc? Să mă cunoşti? Stam unul lângă altul ca plopii mari - şi proşti.

when Mary died a few years after their wedding, Philip wasn’t exactly broken up about it. He was so unfazed, in fact, that he immediately proposed to her much younger sister. (In terms of taste, that’s nearly on par with beheading your wife, then marrying her illiterate, nymphomaniacal teenage cousin. Keeping it classy, Tudors.)

Right next door to the bear gardens on the south bank of the Thames in the last years of Elizabeth's reign sat the main theatres of the day. Permanent theatres were brand sparking new, the very first not appearing until 1576. Throughout the reigns of Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary I, theatre had been a mobile activity, and a largely amateur one.

When I was first at court and he was the young husband of a beautiful wife, he was a golden king. They called him the handsomest prince in Christendom, and that was not flattery. Mary Boleyn was in love with him, Anne was in love with him, I was in love with him. There was not one girl at court, nor one girl in the country, who could resist him. Then he turned against his wife, Queen Katherine, a good woman, and Anne taught him how to be cruel.

Queen Mary was known as Bloody Mary because of the large number of people she killed. And also because of misogyny. She was the first properly crowned woman to rule as queen regnant, not just queen consort. You weren't supposed to be able to do this job if you were a woman, so a lot of people didn't like it. That may be why she gets the soubriquet 'bloody' when many of her male predecessors were responsible for more deaths - in battles as well as executions.

I feel very strongly that history has mostly been written by men, and even when it is not prejudiced against women it is dominated by a male perspective and male morality. Some of my heroines have been considered simply unimportant—like Mary Boleyn or Katherine Howard—and some of them have been stereotyped—like Anne of Cleves and Katherine of Aragon. I don’t start with a determination of putting the record straight, but when I read terribly prejudiced misjudgments of women I cannot help but consider what they would really have been like—and writing them back into the history.

Is that it?” he demanded, in sudden rage. “Is that all that matters? Not that I am in love and tumbled like a fool into sin. Not that I can never be happy, married to a snake and in love with a heartbreaker, but only, only, that Mistress Anne Boleyn’s reputation must be without blemish.” At once she flew at him, her hands spread like claws, and he caught her wrists before she could rake his face. “Look at me!” she hissed. “Didn’t I give up my only love, didn’t I break my heart? Didn’t you tell me then that it was worth the price?” He held her away but she was unstoppable. “Look at Mary! Didn’t we take her from her husband and me from mine? And now you have to give up someone too. You have to lose the great love of your life, as I have lost mine, as Mary lost hers. Don’t whimper to me about heartbreak, you murdered my love and we buried it together and now it is gone.” George

We wind our way past Tower Hill and the scaffold that stands there, where my father ended his life, and I bow my head to his memory, and remember his hopeless struggle against Queen Mary. I think how glad he would be to see one daughter, at least, riding from the Tower to freedom, her baby beside her and her noble husband and heir following behind. It’s bitter for me to think of him, and the death that he brought on Jane,

It was a situation which fostered inbreeding; in fact, the very foundation of the Tudor dynasty was a marriage between cousins two generations before Mary. After Henry VII married Elizabeth of York, it helped bring an end to the Wars of the Roses.

It is often said that a secure childhood makes the best foundation for a happy life. In marked contrast to her cousin Elizabeth Tudor, Mary Stuart enjoyed an exceptionally cosseted youth. It is left to the judgement of history to decide whether it did, in fact, adequately prepare her for the extreme stresses with which the course of her later life confronted her.

Always, I sensed the difference between others and myself in the power of my emotions, and felt ashamed that I was less calm than Mary, and less able than George to view matters with level-headedness. It was so difficult for me. I was too easily carried away and wished to hide this, for expression of feelings always drew frowns or gasps, and was generally viewed as something base and common, as well as inappropriate. I prayed often that God might make me good.

Venice….I think you may promise the Tsar what you like, for I do not think for a moment that Mary Tudor will agree. The Tsar needs munitions, but he needs trade and communication with the west even more.

It is time to move forward, my lady,” Margaret said. “The future is brighter than the past.

So Elizabeth behaved cautiously as usual and put Mary [Queen of Scots] in prison - nice prison, but she wasn't allowed out. And that's where she stayed for nineteen years. . . . She immediately became the focus of plots and rebellions. In 1569, there was a major Catholic rising in the north which aimed to free Mary, marry her to the Duke of Norfolk and put her on the throne. When it was defeated, Elizabeth had 600 rebels executed (so it wasn't just her sister who could be bloody).

Mary was certainly sympathetic to Jane's situation, and though she soon removed from the Tower to Richmond Palace without seeing her cousin, Jane was not forgotten. By 13 August it seems clear that Mary had received Jane's letter, and that she had accepted her version of events. During their audience with her that day, the Imperial ambassadors reported that thought the Queen made it clear that 'she had not pardoned anybody yet', and there were many who whispered in the Queen's ear that 'Jane of Suffolk deserved death according to English law', Mary, conscious of their familial bonds and Jane's tender age, could not bring herself to execute her cousin. It was evident that Mary believed in Jane's innocence, for in words that almost echoed those in Jane's letter, the ambassadors informed their master that Jane knew nothing of the plans in which she had become helplessly entangled, 'nor was she ever a party nor did she ever give her consent to the [Duke of Northumberland]'s intrigues and plots'. This seems to indicate that Mary had indeed received Jane's account, and she was firm in her decision to be merciful. The Queen's conscience, the ambassadors continued, 'would not permit her to have her put to death', despite the fact that she had been warned by the use of an example from Roman history that it would be better to put Jane to death, 'because of the scandal and danger that might have followed'. Jane's life, it seemed, was safe.

Though wildly different in both character and tastes, Jane and Mary shared a common bond aside from the royal blood which flowed in their veins: their religious devotion was unswerving, and the dominant factor in both of their lives. For Mary, the situation was heartbreaking. Jane's mother, Frances, had been a close childhood companion. Frances, like her husband and her daughter, was a Protestant, though perhaps not as fervent in her faith as her husband and eldest daughter. Despite the fact that she and Mary were on opposing sides of the religious fence, to all appearances their differing beliefs had never driven a wedge between the cousins. Frances was a seasoned courtier, and as such she was well skilled in the art of diplomacy. It seems likely, therefore, that when she was in the company of her childhood friend, the two women tactfully avoided conversing on the subject of religion. After all, there were many at court who managed to maintain friendships with people who held differing religious beliefs, and Mary had also been friendly with Jane's step-grandmother, Katherine Willoughby. But it was quite different with jane, for though Mary had tried her best with the teenager, and had done her utmost to be affectionate, the relationship was not a harmonious one. The age gap between them meant that to Jane, Mary was probably more like an aunt than a cousin. Mary may have been twenty years Jane's senior, but it was not age that lay at the heart of the matter; the reason for the distance between the two cousins was perfectly simple: religion.

Queen Mary had made a decision. Agonizing though it had been for her, she now realized that while Jane lived, she could potentially form a focal point for future dissenters. She had done all that she could in order to preserve the life of the young girl, but she could do no more. Evan after Wyatt's treachery had been discovered, 'the Queen was already considering to have her reprieved, but, judging that such an action might give rise to new riots, the Council ruled it out and sentenced her to death'. Moreover, '[Simon Renard, Imperial ambassador] in the closet, and [Stephen Gardiner, Lord Chancellor] in the pulpit, alike told her that she must show no mercy.' Thanks to the actions of her father, the death sentence handed to Jane at Guildhall would have to become a reality.

To love was the greatest adventure life had to offer; but to love was to suffer.

Yet a simple ceremony in an English church, with no jewels, no brilliant company, no crown, could have made her the happiest woman in the world, providing the right man had shared that ceremony with her.

Mary was tried for treason in October 1586 and found guilty. Parliament and Elizabeth's Privy Council put pressure on Elizabeth to execute Mary, but Elizabeth was unwilling to sign the death warrant of a fellow sovereign, who she believed to be appointed by God, and also a woman with Tudor blood. Elizabeth finally signed Mary's death warrant on the 1st February 1587 and it was delivered, without the Queen's knowledge to Fotheringhay, where the sentence was carried out on the 8th February 1587.

it came wi a lass, it'll gang wi a lass" ("it came with a lass, it will end with a lass") as he lay dying, referring to how the Stuart dynasty began with a girl, through Marjorie Bruce, Robert the Bruce's daughter, and how he feared it would now end with his daughter, Mary. However, the Stuart dynasty actually ended with another girl, Queen Anne, in 1714,

Maent yn dweud fy mod yn caru, Lle nad wyf, mi allaf dyngu. Yn lle ‘rwyf yn caru mwyaf Y mae lleiaf sôn amdanaf.

The tension in the room had reached breaking point when at last he swung his axe. It smashed into Mary’s head. Some thought they heard a cry. A second stroke almost severed the neck. The axe was then used like a cleaver on a chicken wing to cut it free. As the head fell the executioner raised it up, with the shout ‘God save the queen’, only to have it drop out of his hand leaving him clutching her chestnut wig. It had been severed from its moorings by the botched strike of the axe. As Shrewsbury wept, the executioners began to tear the dead queen’s stockings from her corpse. In was a perk of the job to be allowed to keep or sell their victim’s clothes. Their action disturbed her little dog, hidden under her skirts. Covered with blood, it rushed up and down the body, howling plaintively.16

My lord, in all my life I never communed [talked] with her in any serious cause until now, and would not have thought she had been such as I find her, which, as I think, is but too wise for a woman”.

Her annoyance burned bright. Her neck was still warm and tingling where he’d stroked her, driving home how well he knew a woman’s body. Yet he was displeased that she might know a thing or two about how to touch him. The arrogance of it all.

Upon hearing Mary's name, the crowds were so joyous that the [Earl of Pembroke] was unable to conclude his speech, and 'he himself who was wearing a cap of great value, covered with gold and precious stones, threw it up into the air, which use is observed when they give went to an exceptional joy'. It may not have been quite the scene described by Mary's supporters, whereby people were 'leaping and dancing as though beside themselves', and there was 'such a clamour and din and press of people in the streets' as men 'ran hither and thither, bonnets flew into the air, shouts rose higher than the stars, fires were lit on all sides, and all the bells were set a-pealing', but all of the sources agree that the news of Mary's accession was greeted with jubilation.

Still under pressure to do more to punish Jane, Mary decided that justice must be seen to have taken its course. She had therefore resolved that Jane, together with her husband and his four brothers, must be 'tried and sentenced to receive capital punishment for the crimes they have committed'. It is clear that Mary had no wish to see her young cousin die, and the trial may therefore have been intended as no more than a formality, after which Jane could resume her imprisonment. After all, it was a queen's prerogative to show mercy, and it was one that Mary intended to use. It is unclear precisely when Jane was informed that she was to face this most harrowing ordeal, or how she reacted. After all, Mary had indicated that she would be given her life, and in time her liberty, thus the thought of standing trial, though not wholly unexpected, may still have come as something of a shock. As Jane contemplated the chilling prospect of her trial and what lay ahead, she would have been all to aware that in the past she had caused Mary so much humiliation and annoyance. But Mary had a kind heart and had refused the advice of her Councillors, several of whom had urged her to take Jane's life in order to secure her own safety. As Jane now faced a perilous trial, her only hope of survival lay in Mary's previous inclination to clemency. Nevertheless, she was well aware that many of those who stood trial did not survive the consequences. The stage had been set.

There were a couple of positives: in 1554, the Queen Regent's Prerogative Act was passed which made explicit, for the first time, that when a woman inherited the throne - became the sovereign, queen regnant rather than consort - she enjoyed the same powers as a king. Or had them, anyway. It really doesn't seem like she enjoyed them.

As Mary absorbed the news, she showed herself to be both gracious and merciful to the two men [Henry FitzAlan, Earl of Arundel and Sir William Paget]. After all, this was her moment of triumph, and it was one that she was determined to savour. She had been victorious and won her kingdom without bloodshed - she was now Queen of England. In the days that followed, 'many nobles and knights presented themselves in the castle where the Queen was'; men who had once supported Jane, and were now eager to ingratiate themselves with Queen Mary in order to procure her forgiveness and goodwill. Mary showed herself to be equally merciful, and declared that in spite of their treachery, they would be forgiven and their lives spared.

Two hundred years before, in the days of the Tudors, Bloody Queen Mary had used the conveniently open space to burn Protestants to save their souls, and her sister, Elizabeth, had in turn used it to burn an even greater number of Catholics, because that’s what royals did with people they hated.

Boyer, Paul S., and Stephen Nissenbaum. Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974. Breslaw, Elaine G. Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem: Devilish Indians and Puritan Fantasies. New York: New York University Press, 1996. Clark, Stuart. Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Cross, Tom Peete. Witchcraft in North Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1919. Davies, Owen. Popular Magic: Cunning-Folk in English History. New York: Bloomsbury, 2007. Demos, John Putnam. Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982. Gibson, Marion. Witchcraft Myths in American Culture. New York: Routledge, 2007. Godbeer, Richard. The Devil’s Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Goss, K. David. Daily Life During the Salem Witch Trials. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2012. Hall, David D. Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England. New York: Knopf, 1989. Hansen, Chadwick. Witchcraft at Salem. New York: G. Braziller, 1969. Hutton, Ronald. The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Karlsen, Carol F. The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England. New York: Norton, 1987. Levack, Brian P. The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe. 3rd ed. Harlow, England, New York: Pearson Longman, 2006. Macfarlane, Alan. Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England: A Regional and Comparative Study. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland, 1991. Matossian, Mary K. “Ergot and the Salem Witchcraft Affair.” American Scientist 70 (1970): 355–57. Mixon Jr., Franklin G. “Weather and the Salem Witch Trials.” The Journal of Economic Perspectives 19, no. 1 (2005): 241–42. Norton, Mary Beth. In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002. Parke, Francis Neal. Witchcraft in Maryland. Baltimore: 1937.

As for those who state that it is thanks to a woman, the Lady Eve, that man was expelled from paradise, my answer to them would be that man has gained far more through Mary than he ever lost through Eve.’ 

Mary Tudor’s most vaunted policy had been to restore Catholicism,

Mary Tudor died on November 17, 1558,

Mary Tudor, the English queen, fell mortally ill at the age of forty-two.

Henry VIII was famous not only for his six marriages but also for his mistresses. He flaunted Bessie Blount and others, including Mary Boleyn, his mistress of the early 1520s, openly at court. It was not, of course, acceptable for a woman to take a lover.

The Church owned a duality of attitude. On the one hand, women were depicted negatively as allegorical images in paintings or on tapestries as vain creatures and temptresses. On the other hand, women possessed the warmth of Mary the Madonna and mother.

Although these were not necessarily gifts Mary consciously gave to Elizabeth, as the first independent queen of England it was she who established a powerful rhetoric for female rule, which Elizabeth quite literally inherited. Mary’s claims include: (1) the idea the she was the virgin mother of her country; (2) the idea that England’s people were her children; (3) the idea that she was a virgin wedded to her kingdom, her coronation ring being, specifically, her wedding ring.

In a short six weeks, the “Northern Rebellion,” as it was called, was summarily put down by southern forces loyal to the English crown. Elizabeth exacted a terrible revenge by calling for (specifying the number) seven hundred executions of the common people, even though there had been no uprising of the general populace in support of the rebel earls of the North. (Her sister “Bloody” Mary had burned a total of 284 Protestants at the stake, including two babies; another 400 had died of starvation. So the sisters are somewhat even as to numbers of deaths directly attributable to their decisions, although Mary burned Protestants for reasons of religion, while Elizabeth hanged Catholics for reasons of state security. Mary’s executions still historically defined her half a century later as “Bloody Mary.” Elizabeth remained “Gloriana.”)

Mary Stuart and Elizabeth both aimed at toleration in an intolerant age, in the same ways that Catherine de’ Medici, the mother-in-law of one and the almost mother-in-law of another English queen, labored her whole life to heal the rift between Catholic and Protestant in France. All three of these queens worked as diligently and as astutely as they might to restrain the fratricidal wars of Christian against Christian. What they had to hold up against that violent seismic shift in human sensibility was the orderly traditions of monarchy. If they did not ultimately succeed, they slowed and tempered the disorder and violence.

Because [Michel de Castelnau] had been charged with making peace between [Mary Stuart] and her barons, he ignored Mary’s adamant insistence on how anti-monarchal she considered the rebel lords to be; he decided that hers was a profoundly immature political analysis. Yet Elizabeth’s own moral outrage at these same rebels’ affronts to monarchal principles, when, two years later, they refused to obey her commands to release their anointed queen from prison, suggests that Mary was simply being clear-sighted rather than naïve and saw earlier what Elizabeth learned only later. Mary was neither stupid nor ill-educated. She knew what she was talking about.

I say quietly. “If this is true. And did they think what would happen to me when pretty Mary Howard was in the king’s bed?

She could not blame him,for it was natural that he was concerned about the succession,and every man wanted a boy to carry his line,be he king or yeoman. But Katherine,the daughter of Isabella of Castile, did sometimes wonder why it was seen as essential for a man to rule. Her mother had been a great queen and pray god that Mary would take after her; and thus she herself could see no good reason why Mary should not rule. Yet now was not the time to say that to Henry. That conversation would have to wait on an opportune moment.

fasten them to their hats. Garters were removed from the bride and thrown in the same way a bridal bouquet might be tossed today. The maids would carry the bride to her bedchamber. The bride’s undressing, too, was a semi-social rite.19 After all, it was sex that made it a proper marriage. A priest traditionally blessed the bridal chamber and bed. Little is actually known about this final scene in the marriage rite other than from literary texts or the bedding ceremony of great people. Le Fresne by Marie de France describes the heroine preparing the bedchamber where the priest would bless the newly-weds. Marie de France writes, ‘For this was part of his [the priest’s] duty.’20 * * *

I would rather be torn apart by dogs here and now than ever betray him

It’s going to be all right, Mary,” Queen Jane said. “There is much darkness in the past to haunt you. But I promise if you look forward to the future, it will be bright.

Mother!" yelled a lad's voice, turning all their heads toward her Castle's iron gate in the wall that rose above the river Foyle. ,"Mother!" He halted, catching his breath. "They are all dead!

was the beginning of the Tudor claim to an “Anglo-British

the founder of the Tudor dynasty, could be the rightful king of England too.

father’s

Because of Suffolk, his daughter and his son-in-law had to die. Though Jane Grey and Guilford Dudley had no part in his treason, Mary, encouraged by Gardiner, came to believe that her Crown would never be safe until all threats had been removed.

Having had three husbands already, Mary Queen of Scots was ready for a fourth. As she surmised, her hopes lay not in Elizabeth’s promises - which had proved so empty – but on making a new match for herself. The bridegroom she had in mind was England’s premier nobleman, the Duke of Norfolk.

In February 1544, a new Act of Succession modified the one of 1536 that had settled the Crown on the children of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour. Edward was still first in line to the throne, of course, followed by any children the King might have with Katharine Parr. A significant change in the Act was that Mary was back in the picture, as was Elizabeth – though both were still considered illegitimate.

Europe by those who laughed about her, a woman who spent most of the day at her prie-dieu and it was said had never laughed at a bawdy jest. The daughter of Henry the Eighth, and they could say that of her! He wondered what would happen to the young girl who had been bequeathed her cousin’s throne. What next? ‘It is said that the Lady Mary will overpower Queen Jane, and that she will be sent to the prison of the Tower of London, where the Lady Mary’s father sent ladies whom he found irksome.’ For a passing second a strange sneer crossed the face of the gentleman, a sneer which Philip found reflected in his own. King Henry the Eighth ‒ and

1555 – Burning of Protestant martyr, clergyman and Biblical editor, John Rogers, at Smithfield. Rogers was the first England Protestant burned in Mary I's reign after being condemned as a heretic. Rogers refused the chance of a last minute pardon if he recanted, and died bravely. His wife and eleven children, one being newborn and at the breast, attended his burning. Martyrologist John Foxe recorded that Rogers "constantly and cheerfully took his death with wonderful patience, in the defence and quarrel of the Gospel of Christ.

Mary, throughout her life, sought her friendships with women. She was attracted to sisterly relationships where she, a queen since birth, was naturally deferred to, and elicited much devotion from the women who knew her. But this made her ill-equipped to deal with a woman like Elizabeth Tudor, a woman who looked to men, not her own sex, for the great friendships of her life. Although proud of family and naturally loyal, Elizabeth refused to be seduced by intimations of female solidarity and any play on the natural bonds of sex and blood. In the early years of their direct relationship,