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I am delighted to share with you a guest post about Queen Claude of France, by Sylvia Barbara Soberton, author of The Forgotten Tudor Women: Margaret Douglas, Mary Howard & Mary Shelton and Golden Age Ladies: Women Who Shaped the Courts of Francis I and Henry VIII, available from Amazon.

Claude of France: Anne Boleyn’s royal mistress

By Sylvia Barbara Soberton

Anne Boleyn spent seven years at the French court serving as one of Queen Claude’s maids of honour. Anne’s sojourn in France had a lasting impact on her manners, appearance and tastes—she was said to have been “more French than a Frenchwoman born”—and in this article, I will take a closer look at Queen Claude, her court and her final days.

Early life

Claude of France was born on 13 October 1499 in the picturesque Chateau de Romorantin, owned by Louise of Savoy, mother of Claude’s future husband, Francis I. Claude’s mother, Anne of Brittany, was twice crowned Queen of France—she was first married to Charles VIII and then to Louis XII. Claude was the first child born to Anne and Louis. The King hoped to sire a male heir with Anne, but the Queen struggled to deliver a son. Between 1498 and her death in 1514, Anne of Brittany experienced numerous pregnancies and miscarriages. In 1510, she delivered another daughter, Madame Renée, who, many years later, would recall that she knew Anne Boleyn when she served as her sister’s maid of honour.

Anne of Brittany died on 9 January 1514. Louis XII, although devastated at the news, remarried in great haste, taking Henry VIII’s younger sister, Mary, as his next wife. According to Robert de la Marck, Francis I’s boon companion, Claude “was greatly distressed, for her mother had been dead only a short while, and now she was obliged to serve her [Mary Tudor] as she had formerly served the Queen her mother”.[1] Despite her distress, Claude put on a brave face and didn’t fail to show respect to Louis XII’s new wife, who was only three years her senior. The marriage didn’t last long and ended with Louis XII’s death on 1 January 1515.

Queen of France

With her father’s death, Claude’s husband, Francis I—the King’s nearest male relative—inherited the crown. As the English chronicler Raphael Holinshed explained, Francis “was preferred to the succession of the kingdom before the daughters [Claude and Renée] of the dead King by virtue and disposition of the Salic law, a law very ancient in the realm of France, which excluded from the royal dignity all women”.[2]

Claude’s thoughts touching the preferment of her husband’s claim over hers are not recorded, but we may assume that she was content with the role of royal consort because she had been groomed to become one from birth. At the same time, she was well aware of her importance and the political implications of her marriage to Francis. Despite being Queen of France, Claude was simultaneously Duchess of Brittany in her own right and sought to assume her own independent political role as such. Yet Claude also knew that despite her importance as Louis XII’s daughter, she needed to prove her worth by giving birth to a male heir, a duty her mother never fulfilled.

Claude’s name was linked to that of Francis I from her early childhood, and although she was the best dynastic match for him, some people opposed it on the basis of Claude’s frail physique. She was “strangely corpulent”, “small and badly lame in both hips” and “not beautiful”.[3] Pierre de Rohan, Marshal of Gié, told Louise of Savoy that he would rather see her son “married to a simple shepherdess of this kingdom than to Madame Claude because the misfortune is such that Madame Claude is deformed in body and unable to bear children”.[4]

When she became pregnant, most people assumed that she would die while giving birth. According to one English observer, rumour had it that even the pope alleged that “the French asserted the present Queen would die in childbed”.[5] Claude eventually proved her critics wrong, giving birth to seven children during the period from 1515 to 1524. Historian Simone Bertière calculated that Claude was pregnant 63 of the 122 months of her reign. These frequent pregnancies took their toll on the Queen’s fragile health, and she could not attend her husband’s court and play a ceremonial role as often as etiquette required.

Life at court

It has often been suggested that Queen Claude lived in some kind of self-imposed seclusion spent on rounds of religious observances and that her philandering husband didn’t show her enough respect. While it is true that Francis I was a notorious womaniser who kept several mistresses, he was also very fond of Claude. One observer remarked that he held her “in such honour and respect that when in France and with her he has never failed to sleep with her each night”.[6]

Likewise, suggestions that Claude was dull and ran her household like a convent are far from the truth. Claude enjoyed reading romances and had a deep appreciation for poetry. Among her ladies-in-waiting was noblewoman Anne de Graville, the sole female French court poet of that period and a strong-minded individual who married her husband, Pierre de Balsac, against her father’s wishes and eloped with him. Claude requested poems and translations of Latin texts from Anne; La Belle Dame sans Mercy (The Beautiful Lady without Mercy), an adaptation of Alain Chartier’s poem, and a historical romance, Palamon and Arcite. Both were dedicated to Queen Claude, whom Anne de Graville extolled beyond measure as her patroness.

There is also plenty of evidence that Queen Claude took especial care of her appearance and wardrobe in order to keep up with her husband’s exuberant court. She dressed fashionably, often dazzling the foreign ambassadors with the quantity and size of jewels she wore as well as with the quality of materials she chose for her gowns. She also displayed an interest in cosmetics, receiving three jars of scented hand cream from the fashionable Isabella d’Este.

Death

Claude of France fell sick in October 1523. The King’s sister, Margaret, nursed Claude in her sickness and asked her friend Guillaume Briçonnet, Bishop of Meaux, “to visit the Queen, who is gravely ill”.[7] The Queen died on 26 July 1524, aged only twenty-four. Some historians state that Claude died on 20 July, but this is a mistake that first originated in the nineteenth-century edition of Robert de la Marck’s memoirs.[8] The contemporary Journal d’un Bourgeois de Paris sous le Règne de François Premier fixes the Queen’s death at 26 July 1524.[9]

What killed Claude of France? Was it the strain of constant childbearing coupled with her already weak physique, or was it something else? The court historian Brantôme blamed Claude’s philandering husband for infecting her with syphilis, a disease that “shortened her days”. Whereas many French historians dismiss Brantôme’s claim as mere gossip, rumours about Claude suffering from “the French pox”, as syphilis was popularly called in the sixteenth century, abounded during the months leading up to her death. Many foreign ambassadors wrote that the young Queen “was said to be dying of the [great] pox”. In August 1524, Francis I was also rumoured to have been treated for this disease.[10]

Francis I’s reaction to his wife’s death was a mixture of shock and grief. Although he had mistresses during his marriage, he nevertheless had strong feelings for the mother of his children. In a letter to Guillaume Briçonnet, Francis I’s sister, Margaret, wrote about his reaction to Claude’s death:

“Perceiving that it could not long be averted, he mourned exceedingly, saying to Madame [Louise of Savoy, their mother]: ‘If my life could be given in exchange for hers, willingly would I surrender it. Never could I have believed that the bonds of marriage, confirmed by God, were so difficult to sever’. And so in tears we separated. Since, we have had no news how he fares, but I fear that he is burdened with heavy sorrow.”[11]

Because Francis I was preparing for war, Claude was embalmed and temporarily laid to rest in the Saint-Calais Chapel in Blois. An air of sanctity surrounded the late Queen, whose body was said to have performed miracles. She was buried in the Basilica of Saint Denis on 6 November 1526. Buried with the Queen is her daughter, Madame Charlotte, who died on 8 September 1524.

[1] Robert III de La Marck, Seigneur de Fleuranges, Mémoires du Maréchal de Florange, dit le Jeune Adventureaux, Volume 1, p. 158.

[2] Raphael Holinshed, Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland, Volume 3, p. 611.

[3] These descriptions are taken from contemporary sources quoted in Sylvia Barbara Soberton’s Golden Age Ladies, pp. 56, 57, 117.

[4] Paul Lacroix, Louis XII et Anne de Bretagne, p. 306.

[5] Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 2, 1515-1518, n. 647.

[6] Sylvia Barbara Soberton, Golden Age Ladies, p. 58.

[7] Ibid., p. 102.

[8] Robert de La Marck, Seigneur de Fleuranges, Mémoires du Maréchal de Florange, dit le Jeune Adventureaux, Volume 2, p. 148

[9] Journal d’un Bourgeois de Paris sous le Règne de François Premier (1515-1536), p. 206-207.

[10] Sylvia Barbara Soberton, Golden Age Ladies, p. 104.

[11] François Génin, Lettres de Marguerite d’Angoulême, pp. 166-167.

