Dr. Holly Marsden (4:23)

Hello. Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here.

Professor Susannah Lipscomb (4:27)

It's a pleasure, and I'm delighted to have a chance to talk about this woman. I feel like I don't know enough about her, and I'm so excited to dig into your research, and I think maybe that's a sort of general perspective. You know, she ruled alongside her husband, but her. Her role has been overshadowed by him for so long. Why do you think that is?

Dr. Holly Marsden (4:49)

Completely. I think she had a really difficult task of being a woman in a joint monarchy. This joint monarchy was completely unprecedented. And Mary had a very difficult task of shaping her own identity within this William and Mary moniker. And that's really how she's known today, as the Mary to William, rather than in and of herself as a queen in her own right. So it's, yeah, partly being overshadowed by her husband, but also how she's been written by quite traditional historians many, many years ago. She's written as being apolitical and not really interested in ruling, not very interested in the state or the navy or the church, when in fact, she was very, very active in all of these areas. So I think her gender is really central to her identity being lost.

Professor Susannah Lipscomb (5:38)

Let's start at the beginning, then. Tell me about her childhood.

Dr. Holly Marsden (5:41)

Mary and her sister, Princess Anne, who was later to be Queen. Anne grew up together outside of the court, but their uncle was Charles ii, who was king when Mary was born, and their father was James ii. Their mother, Anne Hyde, died very suddenly when Mary and Anne were very young, and she died of breast cancer. But Mary and Anne grew up in quite an interesting time in court. Her father, James, had married her mother very, very quickly, and Anne Hyde was seen as a commoner. So she had quite a poor reputation in court. And Mary and Anne grew up kind of knowing this. Quite unusually for the time Mary and Anne dined with their mother and father, despite living outside of the court space. So they lived in York House in Richmond, and they also lived in a palace in Twickenham. But quite unusually, they dined with their mother and father once a week. And this really gave Mary a sense of an early family. She grew up knowing this kind of family and then a second family. So this was her governess, Lady Frances Villiers Villaz's husband, and their children. And Mary grew up with four kind of secondary sisters, as well as some brothers as well. And these girls grew up reading French romance novels and listening to court gossip. And they were often delivered gossip by their nanny, who was affectionately named Ma'.

Professor Susannah Lipscomb (7:07)

Am.

Dr. Holly Marsden (7:08)

She apparently told them very inappropriate gossip for girls of their age. And this was kind of the space that Mary was growing up in whilst being adjacent to the court space. Obviously, she still had to, being a royal princess, she was a political pawn, if we could say that at this time. And she had to go to a lot of ceremonies and events that were organized and orchestrated by her uncle Charles ii. So Mary's childhood was quite fun in one sense. But then, of course, she has this really sudden death of Anne Hyde, and this would have caused a great sadness to Mary, unfortunately, and not. Not a huge amount of writing correspondence exists from Mary as a child, which is in great comparison to when she was a teenager and an adult, where a huge amount of her writing exists. So it's hard to understand exactly how she felt about this situation, but one could imagine it was very sad for her. And also, knowing her mother's reputation as well must have been very difficult for young Mary and her sister.

Professor Susannah Lipscomb (8:13)

Why, after her father converted to Roman Catholicism, was she raised Protestant? And how did that early religious upbringing shape the kind of queen she became?

Dr. Holly Marsden (8:27)

So Mary's father converted to Catholicism kind of secretly, and then his Catholicism was more widely known in the early 1680s. There isn't really an exact date, but it was kind of talked about a lot in the early 1680s. Mary's mother and Hyde had also converted to Catholicism. So, like you said, it's quite interesting that Mary and Anne were raised fervently Protestant and this was down to Charles ii. So Charles ii, the King had a great hand in Mary and Anne's schooling. They were taught French, Latin, embroidery, music, and in taught in the doctrine of Anglicanism. And Charles was very strict in making sure that Anne and Mary were not exposed to too many Catholic teachings. And this was so that essentially he could secure a greater front against Catholic France. And so Charles was concerned about James's influence over Mary and Anne, who were in line to the throne is possible. It was seen as being possible at this time, although it wasn't definitively sure that Charles and Catherine of Braganza could have children. So it wasn't exactly known that Mary would become a queen. But he had to ensure that the future monarch of England was Protestant in his own faith. And he was very certain of how he would do that. So he chose Mary's chaplains very carefully. After she married William and moved to the Netherlands, he sent an Anglican chaplain with her. So she wasn't exposed to another form of Protestantism in the Dutch court, which was Calvinism. So I think what becomes kind of the crux of Mary's life, her Protestantism, is the very reason she gained the throne. It governs a lot of her later thoughts and she becomes more devout in her Anglicanism as time goes on. And she sees her faith as a solace for many of the other struggles in her life. So I think she had no choice in this. This was the life that was set up for her. She was instructed to practice faith in this way. And this was a very political move from Charles ii. But I think also going through something like the death of your mother at such a young age would encourage her to practice her faith a little bit more. Because as I mentioned, as when she's an adult, she writes consistently about how she finds solace in her faith and how that helps her deal with the struggles in her day to day life. So I can see why being a young child, her, her religious teachings kind of really helped her deal with something as traumatic as that.

Professor Susannah Lipscomb (11:14)

So you've alluded already to the fact that when she was 15, she was betrothed to her cousin William of Orange, who's stadtholder of the Dutch Republic. How was the marriage viewed?

Dr. Holly Marsden (11:25)

So the marriage was, like you mentioned, set in stone as a political move. Charles wanted to ally himself with one of the other major Protestant countries in Northern Europe. And this was in a move against Catholic France. So the marriage was viewed as a necessary move. England and the Netherlands, this Kind of Anglo Dutch alliance was seen as a necessary move by politicians, by parliament, by courtiers against Louis kingdom in France. But it was also seen as being difficult for Mary herself. You get a really great sense of a personal view from a lot of the courtiers at the time who understand that Mary being 15, William being 27, although 15 at this time was quite a normal age to be betrothed and then wed. The age difference between William and Mary. And William didn't have a great reputation in the English court at this time. He was seen as being very grumpy, as boring, he wasn't seen as very attractive. And Mary was really pictured as this young, energetic, lively, gorgeous 15 year old who was 5 foot 11 to William's 5 foot 6. And so I think there were really mixed feelings. There were was an understanding that it was, it was a necessary move, but also that Mary herself found this really difficult. And in fact on the wedding day, her chaplain records that she was crying all day and she was crying in anticipation of her then moving to the Netherlands. And I think people had a great understanding of it's not just being married to this man, but it's also being shipped across the seas to a court that she doesn't know in a language that she doesn't know very well. And so I think there were really, really mixed feelings towards this wedding.

Professor Susannah Lipscomb (13:15)

And what is it like as a marriage?

Dr. Holly Marsden (13:20)

So as a marriage in the early days, Mary and William seemed to not spend a great amount of time together. William is very busy, like you said. He's stadtholder of multiple provinces in the Netherlands and this is a republican position. So he was off governing all of these different provinces, but also had a great military position as well. For the Netherlands. I was off fighting wars already. So early on they didn't have a great amount of time to get to know one another. And Mary spent a lot of time in the Dutch court by herself. She wasn't allowed to bring many people over from England. She did choose to bring her painting master, she chose to bring her nanny and she was sent with a chaplain and there are a few other women who went with her as well. And then she was given in the Netherlands lots of bedchamber women. And it's very unclear as to how these women were chosen. But a lot of these women go on to become Mary's greatest confidants and friends and move in fact back with her when she becomes Queen of England. So Mary doesn't see her husband a lot. He's off fighting wars. He's off in multiple provinces. Mary takes canal trips down the canals in a boat. She doesn't really like hunting, which is a shame because William loves hunting. So he spends a lot of time doing that. And Mary has kind of left her own devices. And this is a point of great kind of future research actually is, what were these foreign princesses in the House of Orange doing at this time? So Mary wasn't the only one. She kind of had precedents laid out before her, like Amalia van Songs. And this was someone she really, really looked up to and who she kind of learned a lot of the soft power tactics that she then kind of administered in her queenship. So that's kind of furnishing, overseeing, building projects. Mary, from an early point in her time in the Netherlands, starts undertaking these kind of projects. She starts commissioning, for example, her palace, Hetlow in Appledoorn in the Netherlands, and building kind of a court space, understanding the importance of creating a court culture. But this meant this was her time to kind of understand her role in the political sphere, this role that she'd been placed into. And meanwhile, William was kind of doing her own thing. These were the early days. Mary clearly cares about William. She writes about how she is worried about him crossing seas about worried about him in battle. This fondness for each other grows as time goes on, and I think they grow in understanding of each other. And Mary does. Does really care about William. I will say that her communication with William is a lot more formal than it is with her friends. She has a lot of very, very close friends whom she shares really, really personal, her inner kind of thoughts and feelings and desires with. And William. The correspondence with William is a little bit more formal.

Professor Susannah Lipscomb (16:22)

So you're building up a picture of a companionate marriage. But as you've suggested, we do know quite a bit about her feelings and there's lots of correspondence. We can think about some of the recent work that's looking at Mary as what we might call queer, or I know the historian Judith Bennett describes it as lesbian, like. Tell us about the effective, possibly romantic relationships that Mary had with women from a young age.

Dr. Holly Marsden (16:55)

So Judith Bennett's term, which you mentioned, is, I think, super helpful in describing these kind of gray areas of women's sociability, especially in this early modern period in the 17th century. This is not to say that Mary was definitively romantically linked with any of the women she surrounded herself with, but it does kind of address these gray areas. So Mary started writing the first kind of sign of this romantic affection towards other women. Was from when Mary was very young. When she was 13, she started writing letters to a courtier, Lady Frances Apsley. And these letters were very romantically driven. They. The women play at the dynamic of heterosexual marriage in them, so they both adopt a play name that's taken from a Baroque romance, a piece of literature. And these women write to one another as if they are husband and wife, and they're very sexually charged. Mary talks about wanting to be impregnated with Francis's discourse, and they really explore the boundaries of women's letter writing at the time. And this wasn't kind of the only dynamic that was happening in the court at the time. So Apsley also wrote to Mary's sister Anne as well, and Anne famously wrote to Lady Sarah Churchill, and other women similarly adopting play names to explore desire and sensuality and connection as well. So amongst women writing very sensual phrases, Mary talks to Apsley about when she's in the Netherlands. She asked for the latest gossip in the English court. She asked her to send a Blake race satin piece of fabric to her, which she can't get in the Netherlands. And so this was really a way of these women exploring their dynamic and exploring kind of the terms of friendship. And I think it's quite interesting, the scholar Molly McLean looks at this dynamic of adopting play names inspired by literature and the role of Baroque literature in women's relationships at that time, which is really interesting. I think this was kind of the first time Mary was exploring sensuality, as far as evidence can show us. And as time goes on. So Mary and Frances, whilst they're in the Netherlands, their relationship kind of disintegrates a little bit. And Mary is absolutely gutted by this. Her letters towards the end of their correspondence are quite fraught. You can really sense a tension between the women. And Mary asks Frances, you're spending too much time. So Frances had already married off, and she's telling Frances she's spending too much time with her husband and that she misses her and she's sorry for taking so long to write her that often. Mary's letters to Frances are often really berating of herself, and she's blaming herself for taking too long to write to Frances. And after this, Mary doesn't write as passionate letters to other women, but she does continue to write very, very personal letters. And these share her, like I said, her inner anxieties, her inner desires, and she even sends a lock of hair to one of her best friends in the Netherlands. So she continues having very important personal relationships with women.

Professor Susannah Lipscomb (20:18)

So let's talk a bit about the events that have got the name the Glorious Revolution. What happened and how popular was the accession of William and Mary to the throne?

Dr. Holly Marsden (20:32)

So the so called Glorious Revolution, like you mentioned, it's become known as a bloodless coup. This is very debatable. Many of the events that led up to Marian Williams coronation were in fact quite bloody and the ones that continued. So most people will have heard of the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 or the massacre of Glencoe in 1693. And the term Glorious Revolution is starting to be very contested now. But it was essentially an event in which seven bishops worried bishops, concerned bishops wrote to William and Mary in the Netherlands and asked them to overthrow Mary's father, James ii, out of anxiety and worry for a future Protestant kingdom. And before this happened, there was an event in which Mary's stepmother, Mary Beatrice of Modena, who Mary was very, very close to. Actually they were closer in age than Mary Beatrice and Mary's father, James ii and Mary Beatrice had a child beforehand, she hadn't had a son yet. And she then birthed a son in 1688. And all of a sudden the country fell into panic and there was this great anxiety that there would be a Catholic kingdom because James then had a Catholic heir. And this was known as the Warming pan scandal. So the idea was that this rumor circulated that Mary Beatrice's child was not in fact her own child and it was a false pregnancy and it was in fact someone else's child, maybe one of her ladies in waiting. And this baby was smuggled into Mary Beatrice's bed in a warming pan. And there are multiple versions of this rumor that were all flying around. Anne, Mary's sister, actually believes quite fervently in the rumour she says that she was at Hampton Court when the birth was happening. Mary Beatrice was changing in another room that she was in. At this time in the English court, births were very public in the sense that there were courtiers in the room, the birthing room, not necessarily members of the public. So all of these rumors were flying around. Anne really believed in them. She wrote to Mary concerning this warming Pan rumor, saying that the child wasn't real, the child wasn't a real heir. And all of this kind of anxiety led to William and Mary being invited to overthrow Mary's father in what's become known as the Glorious Revolution. And so once Mary and William, they agreed and William went over first with an army, James II fled to France and then Mary came over later. And this was an event that really pained Mary for the rest of her life. She felt a great amount of guilt for this. She obviously had to break up her own family. And she had a close relationship with James before that. Interestingly, despite their confessional differences, they'd exchanged a series of letters in which they both defend their own choice of faith. So Mary defends her Anglicanism and James defends his Catholicism. And they're both very understanding towards one another. So she sees it as very difficult to kind of betray that trust that they have and that understanding that they have in this event, but similarly sees it as her absolute duty. She sees herself as kind of. And this is how she was painted during this time, as a mother to the nation. She didn't have any of her own children, and it was her duty, her Anglican duty, to save the people of England from the evils of Catholicism. And then. So she came over and they were crowned the following year.

Professor Susannah Lipscomb (24:25)

Why did she refuse the chance to rule alone?

Dr. Holly Marsden (24:27)

Without William, Mary has greater legitimacy. She's James II's daughter. William was also legitimate, so he was Mary's first cousin. He was also in line to the throne. But Mary's legitimacy really bolstered her, and he. He obviously could not rule alone because of that. So Mary writes at this time that she feels uncomfortable in the prospect of ruling by herself. She wants to have her husband by her side. The prospect of rule is quite overwhelming for her. And I think this is kind of where she becomes known as not being very interested in politics. So she states this worry and says, actually, I'd rather rule alongside my husband. And this is probably for a multitude of reasons, but she was quite a naturally anxious, worried person. And I think the idea of ruling with her husband would alleviate a lot of those worries. He also has the skills of governing multiple provinces in the Netherlands and being very competent in his martial abilities, which is something she has not personally had experience in. So I think there are multiple reasons why someone would want to do that. But because of this statement where she says, I feel more comfortable ruling alongside my husband, she has been written off as not being very interested or competent as a queen.

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Dr. Holly Marsden (27:47)

But

Professor Susannah Lipscomb (27:47)

actually we do have some evidence of her governing alone during the time when William is away at war, when she's regent. So do we have information there about her political skills and perhaps an increased level of confidence at that point?

Dr. Holly Marsden (28:02)

Exactly. We. We definitely do. So a Regency act was drawn up in 1690, and that dictated that when William was away at war, Mary would rule alongside a regency council. And Mary was very active on this council. William was often away for the majority of their rule. And Mary competently was active in the regency council. She was active in the Cabinet Council, she was active in the Privy Council. She attended the meetings every week. She also governed the navy, and this kind of became her charge over time. So William, although he governed the army, Mary again whilst he was away, we have lots of evidence of her sending instructions to different governors in places like Scotland, even in places in the colonies overseas. There is one example of where Mary tells the troops not to progress towards Glencoe. They in fact, do end up ignoring her. And the massacre happens. There is a lot of evidence of Mary becoming confident in her abilities, and that is when we see her shuffling around her different councils. So she was presented with the different councils that would help her rule, and she was quite untrusting of a few of these members and she starts shuffling them around and that's when you really see her kind of come into her own in terms of her queenship. She signs off a lot of pardons, a lot of treaties, as Any other monarch does. But I think because of this dual monarchy, this isn't really understood as being part of Mary's charge. And because she was doing this alongside building palaces, overseeing building works, buying a lot of furniture and buying a lot of clothing, this part of her isn't really talked about, but there is a wealth, an absolute wealth of evidence of letters, tracts, accounts that show her buying ammunition for the army or telling generals not to invade. And so it's a really kind of undersung part of her, of her life.

Professor Susannah Lipscomb (30:08)

So I'd like to get a bit of a sense, given that you've just mentioned the massacre at Glencoe, of what we know of her response to incidents such as that.

Dr. Holly Marsden (30:20)

Unfortunately, with Glencoe, there isn't anything that remains of her talking about the massacre or even kind of discussing the fallout of it in her journals. So the evidence that exists of Mary as a person are a selection of memoirs, and these were often written up, drawn up at the end of each year, and also her letters, and unfortunately, none of these mention Glencoe. There is an occasion where there is a big earthquake in Jamaica during Mary's rule, and there is a response from Mary, and she talks about how this is very difficult for the people in Jamaica and how she feels for them, but that also this isn't. She talks about the governors and how this isn't an opportunity to kind of change the governance in Jamaica. What we really do have a sense of, though, is her power, personal relationship. So a lot of her remaining memoirs and letters, and I will caveat this by saying she did burn a bunch of her personal papers before she died, before she found out that she had smallpox. So what remains is. Is really her personal feelings. She does talk about events, especially Jacobite events, where she. There are threats against her life. So this is something that happened during her, in William's reign in the Jacobites. So followers of her father, James ii, who were consistently trying to reinstate James II on the English throne, they were trying to assassinate Mary and William. And this is something that gave her great anxiety. She does write a lot about the Jacobites and different events concerning that kind of political group.

Professor Susannah Lipscomb (32:07)

You mentioned her personal relationships there. When does her relationship with her sister Anne start to break down?

Dr. Holly Marsden (32:13)

So Anne and Mary were great companions during childhood, and even when Mary moved to the Netherlands. In fact, when Mary moved over, Anne was unfortunately ill with smallpox. And James knew how upset Mary would be that Anne couldn't say goodbye, that he didn't tell Anne exactly when Mary was going. And this shows how close they were. But unfortunately, as Anne became closer to some of her female confidants, firstly Lady Mary Cornwallis, and then later Lady Sarah Churchill. Mary grows increasingly suspicious of these women and the power these women had and the kind of governance they had over, over her sister Anne, that Mary says this to Anne many, many times, and she says, I don't trust these women you're around. I think they're out to get your power. And Anne isn't happy with that because she likes spending time with these women very clearly, and she's very unhappy with her sister telling her what to do. I think generally Anne was told what to do by a lot of people, and I can understand why that would be very difficult to handle, especially from your sister. So when Mary's in the Netherlands, their relationship becomes a bit fraught. Anne does go and visit her a few times, once with their stepmother, Mary Beatrice of Modena. But Mary becomes more and more untrusting, especially of Sarah Churchill, as she climbs up to have a greater influence over Anne and the court at large. And when, after Mary moves back to England and becomes queen, she's crowned in 1689, their relationship is pretty tense. So their letters are becoming few and far between. Some of them are very fond of some of them. Mary still remains very close to Anne's children. So Anne had a few children who did survive being babies, and Mary was very, very close to them and sent them gifts. And a lot of their letters acknowledge the gifts that they. That Mary sends these children. But in 1692, they have a great big falling out over Sarah Churchill's influence. And unfortunately, Anne is kicked out of her lodgings, and Sarah Churchill and John Churchill are kicked out of their lodgings that are provided, and they don't see each other again before Mary dies at the end of 1694.

Professor Susannah Lipscomb (34:40)

How sad. What kind of impact did Mary have on the culture of the court?

Dr. Holly Marsden (34:47)

So Mary was very culturally active, especially in music. I think she's. This is one of the things she's most famous for is her relationship with Henry Purcell, the composer. So Henry Purcell was court musician and then kind of court composer. So he really worked his way up. His uncle was also a musician in the court, and he worked his way up and composed a yearly birthday ode for Mary and also was composing many great operas at the time. And these become kind of symbolic of Baroque music and Marion Williams taste in music. So this is one. One factor. Mary was actively involved in commissioning music and listening to music in the court. She also really liked folk music. So there is One instance of Mary telling Purcell to stop playing her these classical compositions and instead asking to listen to Cold and Raw, which is quite a raunchy Scotch ballad. And this is sung by one of Mary's close friends and a court singer, Arabella Hunt. So this is kind of an interesting facet to Mary as queen. So she was listening to all this very highbrow Baroque music, but also these quite raunchy ballads. And this is part of the court culture that Mary tried to and successfully created. There was music playing. She really understood the importance of the multisensory nature of court. And court had to be a space where they welcomed diplomats and ambassadors and it really had to show the majesty of Marian William's reign. Now, of course, there are so many wars going on during this time that money wasn't flowing very strongly. So they were kind of limited. So they began building projects. They turned Nottingham House into what's now Kensington Palace. They started building on Hampton Court, but unfortunately ran out of money. So there's kind of a half completed Baroque wing which is there today. So these were all of these aspects that Mary worked on, worked together to create this court culture. And part of that was not only in the building and the music, but also in furnishing. So she was, she loved decorating, she was consistently tearing things down, putting things up. Her design schemes of Kensington were pretty wild. So she had striped hangings and a spotted couch at one point. The archives are amazing for these kind of resources because we have all of the kind of inventories and building accounts and financial accounts that really paint a picture of what Mary's court looks like. It wasn't a massively social court in comparison to some other monarchs who'd come before them. And I think this is partly due to both Mary and William's private natures. I think Mary writes a lot about how when she was in Holland and she lived a lot less, kind of pompous, in her words, existence as she did in the English court, the nature of the Dutch court was a bit more reserved. Their Calvinist religion was kind of more quite stripped back in comparison to Anglican practices that were part and parcel of High Church Laudian Anglicanism in England. And Mary really liked that existence that she had. There weren't a great amount of ceremony, she wasn't off hosting audiences a lot of the time. And I think when they came back over to England, Mary and William, the palaces they built, although they had to be symbolic of Majesty and the House of Orange and the House of Stuart, they were also palaces that reflected their kind of inner ideals and desires and interests. So they were quite small domestic palaces in comparison to other monarchs. And this was true also for the events that were held at court. They did have balls for sure. And Mary's ladies in waiting also held their own balls at Kensington, which is quite fun. But there were nowhere near the amount of ceremonial occasions as what had come before them. But that's not to say that they weren't culturally active or interested. William was also interested in music and he had a lot of musicians who followed him to when he was on campaign, which is quite interesting. So music was really played a huge role in the court at this time. Mary often attended the theatre as well. This unfortunately did die down as she became more and more ill, especially in 1694. But she really kind of embodies this idea of the soft power queen and that's complementary to William's hard, what's called a hard martial power. And I think Mary intentionally crafted this image for herself and understood that court culture was a way of kind of disseminating the power that she was allowed to exhibit as a woman in a dual monarchy.

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And how popular was she? Was she influential on public case and behaviors beyond the court?

Dr. Holly Marsden (41:21)

This is a really interesting question. So Mary's quite famous for her collecting. She collected a huge amount of porcelain. This was a time when the British Empire was, was really flourishing and Mary had connections with both the Dutch VOC and the English East India Company and she really kind of utilized these connections and used the connections to display Her Majesty. So she had someone in China who was facilitating her collection. So they were sourcing beautiful pieces of porcelain for Mary. She was very heavily involved in Delft, where factories like de Gricia are in the Netherlands, and they would create pieces for her, and Mary would display them, much like you would see perhaps in the palaces like Arenanburg today or Charlottenburg. They still exist in these hugely amassed displays. So porcelain would be stacked on top of one another in shelves all over her palace. Mary had 154 pieces alone in her gallery. And this is a practice that Mary was not the first person to do it. There were other European women who came before her, and William's aunts were actually very influential in Mary's interest in porcelain. But this was a practice that then spread out to other elite women in England at this time. So this was a way that Mary's influence could be seen. It's quite interesting because of the political tensions at the time, because Mary overthrew her own father, which was a hugely contentious act. The country was pretty divided. So Jacobite followers of her father likened her to Tulia. So this is a Roman woman who committed parricide against her father. And they said she essentially, by usurping her father, she essentially killed him. And medals, her coronation medal, for example, was reinterpreted to say that Mary ran over her own father. And so she had this really dual identity of being an awful, horrible woman who created the greatest sin against her own family and then also being the savior of a dynasty. And this was an interesting line that Mary herself had to tow. She, as all monarchs have to be, she was very active in her image building. And Mary actually was not massively interested in visual arts. She's much more interested in the decorative arts, in hangings, in tapestries, in porcelain, silver, rather than visual arts. But she still, of course, had to disseminate her image, and that was through sitting for portraiture. So her coronation portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller is the most reproduced image of Mary. And this was her in her state robes. And it differs greatly from the images that came before. So when Mary was princess, she sat for a few artists, and they painted her with lots of symbols of the House of Orange and the House of Stuart intertwined. And she was portrayed as a very fertile d, delicate, beautiful symbol of beauty. Whereas her coronation portrait, she's dressed in her robes, is much more serious. There isn't symbolism that's kind of bolstering the image. And this was part and parcel of her Active image building. William had a matching portrait too.

Professor Susannah Lipscomb (44:37)

Well, some of these ceramics have portraits of her on that show her bare breasted, which seems rather surprising for a queen. What did viewers at the time think they were seeing?

Dr. Holly Marsden (44:48)

They do indeed. And this is a really interesting topic in my research, because commemorative ceramics were a way of celebrating the monarch. And this was a practice people, members of the public, everyday people collecting and displaying these plates would show their allegiance to the monarch. And this had been happening way before Mary and William's time. But what's interesting about Mary's iconography on these is that, like you said, she is often displayed bare breasted. And I think there's a multitude of reasons as to why this was the case. But first of all, it's important to mention that it wasn't. So the craftspeople making these plates, they were made and then they were painted. And these paintings often copied prints which were in circulation, which copied portraits. The portraits. Of course, only a select amount of society could ever view these portraits in person. And so it's first important to mention that these were kind of an iteration of an image of an image of an image. And so they weren't always directly representative of Mary herself. Obviously her portrait itself is constructed, but

Professor Susannah Lipscomb (46:01)

it feels a bit like we've got a kind of grok version of her official portrait going out on these ceramics.

Dr. Holly Marsden (46:06)

Exactly. You can't, you can't take them at face value. So obviously there's going to be a huge difference between each craftsperson, each factory. There were lots of big factories at the time, especially in Lambeth in London. Bridlington pottery as well was a huge one. And they were churning these out en masse. So they were really coming out quickly. People were painting them very, very quickly. And so some of them are pretty crudely rendered. And Mary, bare breasted, perhaps, is a quick way of portraying her. It was very common for women at this time. It was fashionable for women to be portrayed in very, very low Mantuas. A Mantua was a very fashionable style of gown that came over from the French court in the 17th, late 17th century. And it was very fashionable to be, for women to be displayed with very low, in very low cut dresses. And although Mary was never really displayed in that lower cut dress, it was kind of in the visual vernacular that this was symbolic of a woman's beauty. And so it's perhaps a combination of what was fashionable before. Especially the portraits of women that were in Charles II's court were very kind of bare breasted. And so they were perhaps copying that kind of iconography. But I think we can't underestimate the power of the image and how people understood the power of images at this time. This was popular media, these plates, prints that were circulating. This was popular media, and I think it's possible that some political influence was in there. Was she being displayed as beautiful and bountiful and fertile to take her away from the political arena? On another hand, was she being displayed as a mother to the nation? There was a great practice of displaying a breastfeeding Madonna and that being symbolic of piety. Perhaps that was feeding into it too. They're very, very interesting pieces because Mary, unlike other queens, was displayed in this way. Other queens, Elizabeth Anne was not displayed bare breasted. These are very interesting and conflicting objects.

Professor Susannah Lipscomb (48:15)

Mary died at the age of just 32 in December 1694. What was the cause of her death and how did the country react?

Dr. Holly Marsden (48:23)

Mary died from smallpox and this was absolutely ravishing the population in this time in the late 17th century. Mary had quite a lot of ailments throughout her life, like her sister Anne did as well. She suffered from what she called sore eyes. Her eyesight grew increasingly bad as she aged, and her handwriting, it was absolutely huge towards the end of her life because she couldn't really see. And she often had women reading to her so that she could hear literature, understand literature. She also suffered two quite early miscarriages. She was not able to conceive after those two tragic events in 1677 and 1678. And she was quite unwell. She called her periods of illness as bouts of indisposition. And they're kind of from her journals, I can understand them as being mixed mental and physical ill health. So she feels very physically unwell. Her eyes are playing up, but also she's feeling very, very anxious and very, very low. So it's good to kind of bear in mind that being unwell was quite familiar to Mary. But in early 1694, things took a turn for the worse and she became very, very ill and she withdrew from kind of public opinion. Not that she was often in the public realm, but she withdrew from being seen at the theater and events like that. She cancelled a few social engagements, she cancelled a few balls, and then she becomes progressively more unwell throughout 1694. She discovers a rash in November and that it's confirmed to be smallpox. And she undergoes a series of very traumatic treatments to cure her of this disease. But unfortunately, none of these work. And when she realizes that things are serious, she actually sends the majority of her attendants Away from court and with the understanding that she knows that if they haven't had smallpox before, they could easily catch it too. This is very symbolic of her kind of her empathetic nature and her kindness. She sends all of these people away saying, you, you know, I don't want you to catch it too. So there is a real understanding of how smallpox was spreading at this time. Unfortunately, she becomes more and more unwell, the smallpox takes over her body and she dies. Like you said, age just 32. William is absolutely bereft by her death. And it's quite interesting. A lot of scholars talk about how William didn't show much affection throughout his life, but he does show this after she died. He slept by her side as she was dying on a camp bed. He wore a locket of her hair around his neck afterwards. And there is this huge public outpouring of grief and sadness towards her death. This was the biggest funeral in state history. It was extremely expensive. And although Mary had actually stated she didn't want a huge funeral in, it had been massively ignored. She traveled in a beautifully carved hearse. She underwent a lying in state. So this is where people could pay five pounds and go and see her body. And this was a longer period than it ever, ever was. She was lying in state for about three months. And this was symbolic, I think, of how much people did love her. Despite all of this controversy, despite, despite the difficulty and all of the anxieties of the tumult of the late 17th century, all of these ballads and tracts and poems and coins and medals and portraits were all circulating commemorating Mary and people, I think the fact that she was almost snatched prematurely, she was snatched, aged only 32. People saw that this promise of continuing the dynasty. Her and William didn't have children and she was still seen as being a fertile woman. And this kind of opportunity was taken from her prematurely. And I think that really plays into why she was mourned so much. She was snatched in the prime of her life. She was still seen as very beautiful. And these beauty and having an heir were two of the key facets of queenship, the key ideals of what you had to achieve to be a successful queen. And they were kind of taken from her in her prime and people really mourned her. Of course, there was still literature created by followers of her father that celebrated her death, but the majority was a huge amount of grief.

Professor Susannah Lipscomb (53:06)

We know that William goes on to rule after her death and Anne comes to the throne in 1702. How did that happen?

Dr. Holly Marsden (53:16)

So William takes Over. And he is very sad. He really kind of starts withdrawing as well from public life. He also, because he was less legitimate than Mary, he starts using her image to kind of bolster his. And we see lots of iconography that was used by Mary where he's trying to kind of align himself more closely with the House of Stuart. A lot of William's reputation, I think, stems from xenophobia. People didn't like that he was Dutch, and so he was really battling quite a poor public reputation at this time. William, unfortunately, falls off a horse in 1702 again. He kind of grows quite poorly, quite unwell, but then ultimately dies by falling off a horse in 1702. It should be noted, actually, that William had already overcome smallpox, which is why he was kind of safe to stay with Mary at the end of her life. He suffered his battle, smallpox as a young person, but he falls off his horse on 1702. And the next person in line to the throne, because they did not have children, was Anne. And Anne's queenship, although I think she has this reputation of being completely governed by Lady Sarah Churchill, she really took some facets of her governance, of governance under her wing, especially the colonial projects, colonial enterprise that the Crown was undertaking at this time.

Professor Susannah Lipscomb (54:46)

And do you think she had learnt from the example that Mary had given her?

Dr. Holly Marsden (54:50)

In some ways, yes. I think they were very, very different people and have very different interests. So Anne doesn't exhibit the same interests in, or the same kind of level of interest in furnishing, decoration, collecting as Mary. Anne was interested in visual art like William was, actually. So Anne built quite a collection of visual art and William had a huge gallery and huge collection. So Anne inherits some of this. She was also. After Mary's death, Anne was given some of Mary's possessions. But she doesn't really follow Mary's suit in terms of her administration of this soft power, if we can call it that. I think I will say I've used this term a lot, but it is. It's quite. It's a term that I'm quite conflicted with because I think power is power and all these different areas of Mary's reign and the way she administered her power, work together, work in tandem, rather than kind of. I think it is a very gendered term. But Anne doesn't really show that she enjoys the decoration, massive building projects. I think from Mary, she did learn the importance of being in control of one's image and how to work with certain politicians in order to curate an image that you'd like to that looked good for the dynasty.

Professor Susannah Lipscomb (56:16)

Well, Dr. Holly Marston, thank you so much for introducing us to a character who I think for many people would have been little known and giving us a real sort of sense of who she was. And actually, you know what, it's quite encouraging sometimes to hear about these people and not hear that they're super women, but actually they had, you know, she had her insecurities but was nevertheless very popular in society at large. So thank you for your time.

Dr. Holly Marsden (56:46)

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so glad we can spread Mary's name out there because like you said, she's not often celebrated or heard about.

Professor Susannah Lipscomb (56:55)

Thank you so much. And if you haven't heard them yet, do go back and have a listen to the first three episodes in this series on why Oliver Cromwell's republic failed, Charles ii, restoration of the monarchy, and James ii, the Restoration's last Catholic king. Next time I'll be taking a deeper look into the life and reign of Mary II's sister, Queen Anne, the last of the Stuart monarchs. Thank you you for listening to this episode of Not Just the Tudors From History hit. Thank you also to my researcher Max Wintool, my producer Rob Weinberg, and to Amy Haddo, who edited this episode. We are always eager to hear from you, including receiving your brilliant ideas for subjects we can cover. So do drop us a line@notjusthetorshistorykit.com and I look forward to joining you again for another episode. Next time on not just the Tutors, but from history hit.

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