How Mary de Vere Risked Everything to Marry Peregrine Bertie – and Outmaneuvered Everyone
- 6 hours ago
- 7 min read
A Tudor love affair, a furious brother, a formidable duchess, a powerful queen, and a secret that risked it all.
What do you do when three of the most powerful people in Elizabethan England oppose your marriage to the man you love?
If you are Mary de Vere, you devise and deploy a battle plan. Mary wanted Peregrine Bertie, son of Katherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk, and chose to reveal a secret so dangerous that one of her opponents had no choice but to become her ally.
It was a move worthy of a military strategist.
And it worked.
⚔️ When Three Powerful Enemies Stood in Mary de Vere’s Way
In the last post, Did Shakespeare Base Imogen in Cymbeline on a Real Tudor Woman, we left Mary, sister of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, standing alone, like many of Shakespeare’s heroines, beyond the threshold of the comforts in which she had been born and raised.
No one, apart from Mary and Peregrine, favored the match. Peregrine’s parents locked him up to keep him and Mary physically apart. Peregrine wrote Mary a passionate letter to calm her fears about something that had happened between them. You can read Peregrine’s love letter to Mary here: Love in Lockdown: How Peregrine Bertie Wrote a Secret Love Letter to Mary de Vere.
Mary’s formidable adversaries were:
her brilliant brother, Edward de Vere, who had already betrothed Mary to a man she loathed
Queen Elizabeth I, whose approval was required because Mary served as a Lady of the Privy Chamber
Peregrine’s parents, especially his mother, the Duchess of Suffolk.
👑 Choosing to Turn the Most Dangerous Adversary First: The Duchess of Suffolk
Mary chose to turn Peregrine’s mother, the Duchess, into her ally against the others. The Duchess was not a woman easily intimidated or manipulated. Stalwartly Protestant, she had named her spaniel after Catholic Bishop Stephen Gardiner.
“Heel, Gardiner!”
And yet, Mary chose her for a very good reason: Mary knew that, years before, the Duchess had been secretly in love with someone whom no one thought she should marry either: Peregrine’s father.
🐎 The Duchess of Suffolk’s Secret
Born Lady Katherine Willoughby, the Duchess was the sole heir of William Willoughby, 11th Baron Willoughby de Eresby and Maria de Salinas, a Spanish noblewoman who had accompanied Catherine of Aragon to England. At seven, Katherine’s father died and she became very rich. Her wardship was purchased by Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk, who had been brought up with King Henry VIII. Brandon’s third wife, was Henry’s sister, Mary Tudor, a royal princess and former Queen of France.
Three months after Mary Tudor died in 1533, the Duke married Katherine. She was 14. He was 49. Twelve years later, the Duke died. The young Duchess found herself an even richer widow. Quite a scandal arose when she remarried, this time to Richard Bertie, her Master of the Horse and the son of a stone-mason.
Whoa!
Whose permission did she need? Her own. As an only child, an orphan, a duchess and a widow, she held the trifecta, plus one, of power for a Tudor woman.
Lots of subtle things go on when a man lifts a woman up and down off her horse. Just ask Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester and Queen Elizabeth’s Master of the Horse.
The Duchess had done exactly what Mary wanted to do: marry a man everyone else considered inappropriate. The Duchess had married Peregrine’s father for love. Mary de Vere knew it and she used it.
♟️ Mary de Vere Seizes Her Opportunity
Mary capitalized on the similarity between Duchess’ secret and her own. She paid the Duchess a visit, knowing full well that the Duchess strongly opposed Mary’s marrying her son.
Three stunning 1577 personal letters from the Duchess to William Cecil, Lord Burghley reveal exactly what happened when Mary visited.
Let’s lean closer and hear it word for word from the Duchess herself.
The Duchess’ first letter hinted that because Peregrine was “a little wild”, Burghley might send him from court “while all was still well”.
Wait. While all what was still well?
🕯️“Too Far To Turn”: The Duchess’ Reveal
Her second letter, in July, made clear that “all” was no longer “still well”. It described exactly how Mary’s frontal assault was forming on the betrothal battlefield.
The Duchess wrote:
“My wise son has gone very far with my Lady Mary Vere, I fear too far to turn.”
Since Mary and Peregrine still hadn’t married by December, it appears that something momentous had happened between Mary and Peregrine by July. Something that could not be undone!
Is that a hint, or what? Let’s read on!
“I had rather he had matched in any other place and I told her the causes: her friends make small account of me, her brother did what in him lay to deface my husband and son; besides our religions agree not, and I cannot tell what more. If she should prove like her brother, if an empire follows her I should be sorry to match so.”
Curiously, when the Duchess explains why she doesn’t want Peregrine to marry Mary, the reasons seem to have little to do with Mary.
Then the Duchess reveals exactly what Mary had risked for this marriage:
“She said that she could not rule her brother’s tongue, nor help the rest of his faults, but for herself she trusted . . . I should have no cause to mislike her, and seeing that it was so far forth between my son and her, she deserved my goodwill and asked no more.”
Things had gone “too far to turn” indeed.
Mary had just told the Duchess something impossible to undo: Mary was no longer a virgin. And Peregrine was the reason.
If the story leaks, the Queen will turn on Peregrine and lock him up in the Tower for deflowering Mary.
Mary didn’t flinch. She calmly made clear that the only way for Mary, Peregrine and the Duchess to avoid disgrace and the Queen’s wrath, is for Peregrine to marry Mary, with the Duchess’ blessing.
In a nutshell, Mary outmaneuvered the Duchess by revealing her own Elizabethan Secret: once broken, maidenheads cannot be mended.
The Duchess flusters. Initially, she goes on the offensive:
“That is a seemly thing, quoth I, for you to live on, for I fear that Master Bertie will so much mislike of these dealings that he will give little more than his goodwill, if he give that. Besides, if her Majesty shall mislike of it, sure we turn him to the wide world.”
But Mary stays cool, having anticipated this threat. The Duchess explains to Burghley:
“She told me how Lord Sussex and Master Hatton had promised to speak for her to the Queen, and that I would require you to do the like . . . If I would write, she knew you would do it for my sake and since there was no undoing it, she trusted I could, for my son’s sake, help now.”
Mary presented the Duchess with a fait accompli. Mary was no longer a virgin and Peregrine was responsible. Mary had already arranged for Thomas Radcliffe, Earl of Sussex and Sir Christopher Hatton to speak to the Queen, so the Duchess could not approach the Queen first. All the Duchess could do was support the betrothal and write Burghley for his support. If she did not, things were going to go very badly for her and her only son.
💘 Court Gossip
So here’s the Elizabethan Secret: Peregrine and Mary were lovers before they married, and Mary used it as leverage to win his mother’s approval. That was why Peregrine, in a panic, wrote Mary that passionate love letter assuring her of his faithfulness to her.
The Duchess’ letter also explains why Mary’s brother was so furious with Peregrine and Richard Bertie. The Duchess initially blamed Edward de Vere, but when it became clear that Peregrine had taken Mary’s honor, under the code of chivalry, Edward’s actions were quite understandable, even required.
By late 1577, court gossip swirled that Mary’s and Peregrine’s wedding had been postponed until after Christmas. Neither the Queen, nor Oxford had “wholly assented thereto”.
But Mary had already brought the most dangerous enemy on the field to her side.
The Duchess’ final letter to Burghley describes the strategy Mary deployed next. That strategy, and the identical scene from a Shakespeare play, will be in the next post!
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🎭 If you enjoy secrets about the Elizabethan court and seeing Shakespeare’s characters in a new light, then this blog is written for you!
🎥 Want to Learn More About Mary de Vere?
Mary de Vere’s personal and political acumen intersected with some of the most dramatic events in Elizabethan England. Shakespeare noticed. To learn more about her, you can watch this on YouTube:
