As her father-in-law’s condition worsened, storm clouds gathered over Maria’s head. Everyone at the French Court knew that, while King Francis might respect her maternal ties enough not to seek an annulment of her union with the Dauphin, Prince Henri himself had no such qualms. There was no doubt that Henri’s first move as King would be to send proctors to Rome seeking an annulment.
Tudor that she was, Maria wasn’t going to go down without a fight. Rather than wait for the matter to come to her, she struck pre-emptively. In March 1547, as the rest of the French Court gathered around King Francis’s bedside, waiting for the end, Maria fled Rambouillet for St-Germain-de-Laye. Collecting her daughters, nine-year-old Jeanne, four-year-old Diane and six-month-old Louise, on the pretext of wanting to take them to Court to farewell their grandfather, she disappeared into the night and didn’t stop until she’d reached her brother Richard’s Ducal Court in Rouen, 120km away.
It would be fair to say that Richard and his wife Beatrice were more than a little astonished by her arrival in the dead of night. However, they didn’t let their surprise stop them welcoming her with all the pomp and honour her rank and blood ties to them merited. In what was one of their few coordinated manoeuvres, Maria was escorted through the streets of Rouen with the fleur-de-lys of France and the dolphin of the Dauphin flying high above her head. Her two older daughters were also present at the ceremonial event, Jeanne perched on Richard’s saddle and Diane on Beatrice’s as they flanked her mother through the streets.
Never shy to retaliate, Henri had no sooner acceded to the throne of France than he sent an ambushing force to Ireland, seeking to stake his claim to Maria’s jointure lands of the Irish Clarence estates. The venture was a futile one, however, for bad weather and unfamiliar terrain hindered its progress, so that the English force under the command of the Baron of Upper Ossory, had little difficulty in expelling the French from Anglo-Irish shores.
Henri’s diplomatic efforts bore more fruit than his military ones, however. In 1550, three years after Maria's midnight flight to Rouen, Pope Julius III granted him his annulment on the grounds of Maria’s desertion, and ordered Maria to hand her daughters over to their father’s custody.
Richard, furious on his sister’s behalf and chary of the Pope’s influence over European affairs at the best of times, bristled and declared that if Henri wanted the girls, he should damn well act like a father and come and get them himself rather than hiding behind the skirts of an interfering old man. Maria wept and begged God for mercy, prevaricating all the while. For a while, it looked as though she might dig her heels in against the Papal edict, despite her fervent Catholicism, but then her former mother-in-law, Dowager Queen Eleanor, interceded.
Eleanor had been one of Maria’s few friends at the French Court, the two women bridging the gap in their ages by bonding over their shared Spanish heritage and the fact that their would-be courtiers hated them both.
Eleanor wrote to Maria, pleading with her to accept the Pope’s verdict and promising that, were the younger woman to give up the custody of her daughters, then she, Eleanor, would take them into her household, rather than let King Henri hand them over to the care of his mistress.
Since Diane de Poitiers’s presence in Henri’s life and that of their daughters had always been a major thorn in Maria’s side, and a large part of why her marriage to Henri broke down as far as it did, Queen Eleanor’s offer removed a major stumbling block from the proceedings. Most likely relieved that she wouldn’t have to choose between her love as a mother and her duty as a daughter of the Church of Rome, Maria yielded. Two months later, she handed her daughters over to the young Duke of Guise, whom their father had sent to collect them, with a pale composure that won her more than a few sympathisers, even amongst the French, who, up to that point, had resented her for abandoning her husband. It was there, on the steps of Rouen Cathedral, on a cool, damp October day in 1550, that Maria saw her three daughters, 13-year-old Jeanne, almost eight-year-old Diane and newly 4-year-old Louise, for the last time.
__________Eoin Peniston, ‘“The Fruitless Pomegranate”: Maria Tudor 1516-1558’