1536: The Year That Changed Henry VIII (20 page)

As the play-acting with Aske suggests, the impact on Henry’s honour meant that Henry and his councillors were desperately looking at a range of ways to redeem the situation. For the time being – and these strategies showed how powerless the government really was at this time – the council’s plans included sending a lieutenant to the north, dispatching ‘learned personages to preach and teach the word of God that the people may better know their duties… the ignorance whereof brought to them to their late trouble’, and making arrangements to contain the southern counties ‘if the king will in person proceed to the North to hold his Parliament’. In addition, the council planned to make preparations in case of a renewed military threat, having garrisons planted and provisions made of arms. These were schemes that demonstrate that the king understood the necessity of implementing the agreements made in the pardon but also hoped and prepared to turn things his way. The king was about to have a bit of luck.
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Meanwhile, the absence of any tangible realization of the terms agreed at Doncaster was worrying for the rebels. By mid-January, no official message from the king was forthcoming and Aske wrote to the king on 18 January to chivvy this along, saying ‘the commons, as I brought no writing, begin to suspect me’. Was this deliberate? It seems probable that the government and the commons had wildly different expectations for the schedule of change – Henry talked of having a parliament at Michaelmas 1537 but these ambitions were not shared with the people of the north, who would have wanted it far sooner. For the erstwhile rebels, the lack of an agreed date for the parliament was accompanied by a growing suspicion that the leaders and gentry had betrayed the commons, and these fears fuelled a new series of revolts in early 1537. The first, in the East Riding, broke out in mid-January and was led by Sir Francis Bigod and John Hallom. Bigod was captured on 10 February, but this did not stop further outbreaks in West Riding, Lancashire, Cumberland and Westmorland. These revolts were on a much smaller scale than the Pilgrimage for many refused to fight, trusting in the king’s pardon, but they were sufficient to provide Henry with an opportunity to claim that the rebels had broken their side of the bargain, leaving him free to break his.
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Norfolk, Sussex and Derby had been dispatched to the north to administer the oath of loyalty required by the pardon. The king’s instructions to them show his continuing conviction that the rebellion had been treasonous and that redress should be made before the news of the post-pardon revolts was even known. The duke and two earls were briefed to find the instigators of the insurrection and to make all men swear an oath confessing their ‘untrue demeanour’ to the king and vowing henceforth to be true subjects and maintain all acts of parliaments made during the king’s reign. This would have been a difficult oath for the rebels to swear, especially as the clause about the acts of parliament suggested the curtailment of opportunities for future change anticipated in the northern parliament. Henry’s three envoys were instructed to treat those who refused the oath ‘as the King’s rebel’ (that is, to execute them as traitors) unless force of opinion in the crowd meant such behaviour made the lieutenant’s position dangerous. The instructions also explicitly ordered them to suppress again those monasteries recently restored, and although it is just about possible that one reading of the pardon permitted this, Henry’s tone showed little willingness to compromise. This reflected Henry’s conviction that the monks were hypocrites devoted to the ‘nourishing of vice and abominable living’, whose ‘traitorous conspiracies’ he held largely responsible for ‘all these troubles’.
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The outbreak of renewed rebellion, then, simply played into Henry’s hands and permitted treatment of the rebels as the traitors Henry had always considered them to be. In February alone, Norfolk presided over trials of those involved in the Bigod/ Hallom revolt, where eight rebels were convicted of treason and condemned to death. He then declared martial law in Carlisle, stringing up a further seventy-four rebels. Henry wrote in approval and brutally commanded ‘before you close it [the banner] up again (that is, end the period of martial law), you must cause such dreadful execution upon a good number of inhabitants, hanging them on trees, quartering them and setting their heads and quarters in every town, as shall be a fearful warning’. Further trials took place in March and in April, Aske, Darcy and Constable were arrested and taken to the Tower. Between May and July, they and other leading rebels and clerics were publicly executed. Henry took pleasure in ordering Sir Robert Constable be hanged in chains in Hull, where he had led the revolt, while Aske was to suffer the same treatment in York, ‘where he was in his greatest and most frantic glory’. The indignity of the body left hanging in gibbet irons until it rotted away (Norfolk wrote to Cromwell of Constable’s corpse in July, ‘I think his bones will hang there this hundred year’) was immense, for the prevention of proper burial was thought of with great horror. It demonstrates Henry’s great desire for retribution. In total, between 144 and 153 people were executed for their involvement in the revolts. Ostensibly, all were executed on the basis of their post-pardon crimes: Norfolk was instructed to spread the word that ‘nothing is done to them for their offences before the pardon, but for those treasons they had committed since’. This apparent adherence to the terms of the pardon displays Henry’s usual legalistic relish for appearing to do things by the book (note his earlier enthusiasm for making the most of the period of martial law). Yet it didn’t tie his hands too much. Dubious evidence was gathered to ‘prove’ post-pardon treason even when there had been none. Nevertheless, the political and pragmatic reasons – the need to appear merciful and lawful, in order to sustain the goodwill and cooperation of his subjects – undoubtedly constrained his ability to take vengeance and there were also many acquittals.
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The promised parliament never transpired, nor did Henry have his queen crowned in York. While some of the rebels’ fears were groundless, many of the things they had opposed – the taxes, treatment of the clergy, injunctions against images and pilgrimages – remained in place. England remained outside the Roman Catholic Church and the ‘heretical’ bishops and councillors retained their positions of power (excepting Cromwell’s execution in 1540, of which more below). Although the Bishops’ Book (a statement of doctrine prepared by the bishops and not ratified by the king) of 1537 discussed all seven sacraments, crucially, the king retained his royal supremacy, including for the ‘care of souls’ which reserved him the right to continue to make doctrinal changes in line with his conscience. His use of the supremacy to condemn those who did not agree with him was, in fact, considerably more pronounced after this point; the rebels’ opposition only entrenched his position.

This was especially the case with that central issue of the rebellion: the suppression of the monasteries. On 8 December, just days after the pardon had been agreed, Henry had written to Sir William Fitzwilliam and John, Lord Russell ‘in that point touching the abbeys, we shall never consent to their desires’. In early 1537, Norfolk and others dissolved those monasteries that the rebels had restored, but other houses that had not been part of the earlier campaign were also suppressed, notably Furness, Jervaulx, Bridlington and Whalley. There is little to suggest that in 1536 Henry VIII had intended to dissolve all the monasteries, but the king’s conviction that the monks had been leading figures in the Pilgrimage changed the focus and scope of the suppression. From this point on, the dissolution of the monasteries accelerated, though the means had changed. No longer did Henry intend only to suppress those worth less than £200 or to introduce a blanket suppression by statute that might produce further revolt. Instead, abbot after abbot was persuaded ‘voluntarily’ to ‘confess’ his vice, denounce his way of life and surrender his abbey; those who refused, like the abbots of Reading, Glastonbury and Colchester, found themselves imprisoned and executed for denying the royal supremacy by opposing the king’s will.
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The Pilgrimage of Grace and the King’s Image

At the same time that the ringleaders of the Pilgrimage of Grace were finally dispatched in mid-1537, we can deduce that Holbein started painting the Whitehall Privy Chamber mural, including his great full-body, life-size portrait of Henry VIII. The exact dates of commission and completion are unknown, but it was certainly painted after Anne Boleyn’s death and Henry’s marriage to Jane Seymour in May 1536, because of the latter’s inclusion in the mural. There was also an inscription of ‘1537’ in the final version of the mural (according to the Leemput copy), replacing the earlier use of Henry and Jane’s initials tied by a lover’s knot. Some have suggested it was Jane’s death that prompted Henry to commission the picture, while others have highlighted the lack of allusion in the mural to the birth – actual or anticipated – of Henry VIII’s son and heir, Prince Edward, which might suggest that the picture pre-dates knowledge of Jane’s pregnancy. David Starkey has argued the opposite: that Jane was included precisely because she was pregnant. He therefore dates the commissioning of the picture from the announcement of Jane’s pregnancy on 23 May 1537. While it is perfectly possible that Jane Seymour might have been included purely on the basis of being, in Henry’s opinion, his only true wife (his marriages to Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn had both been annulled), the spring-summer of 1537 seems a likely date for the commissioning for another reason. The message of the picture strongly suggests that it was produced in the aftermath of Henry’s reaction to the Pilgrims of Grace.
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We have already established that this mural was designed to impress and intimidate, with its splendour, magnificence and power (see chapter 9). Holbein’s depiction of Henry VIII made the king into a symbol of strength and virility. Yet there is a further layer of meaning to the picture. Although Henry dominates the composition, it is the stone altar that is at the centre of the painting. Its Latin inscription succinctly gives the viewer the message against which the painting should be read. It reads:

If it rejoice thee to behold the glorious likenesses of heroes, look on these, for greater no tablet ever bore. Great the contest and the rivalry, great the debate whether the father or the son were victor. Each was the victor, the father over his foes, for he quenched the fires of civil strife and to his people granted lasting peace. The son, born to yet greater destiny, from the altars banished the undeserving and in their place set men of worth. To his outstanding virtue the presumption of popes yielded, and as long as Henry VIII wields the sceptre in his hand, true religion is restored, and in his reign the precepts of God have begun to be held in his honour.

This panegyric legend explicitly boasts of Henry VIII’s superiority over his father (Henry VII’s restoration of peace after the Wars of the Roses is dealt with swiftly) and focuses the attention squarely on Henry VIII’s religious policies. It is now even clearer why Henry VIII’s broad-shouldered, powerful stance contrasts so powerfully with the languid, round-shouldered posture of his father: because Henry was asserting his superiority over his father as a man and a monarch.
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Henry VIII was also making a claim for his iconic status: he is the king who has restored true religion and reformed abuses; it is he who has conquered over the pope, rooted out unworthy priests, and returned the country to the obedience of God’s laws. Such an inscription provides a powerful insight into Henry’s perspective on the religious changes he had instituted – it is a clear statement of his pride in the royal supremacy and in the return to proper religious practice that his reign had engendered.
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This inscription, if taken together with the timing of the picture and the virile strength of Henry VIII in it, suggests one reason why the mural may have been commissioned. The mural is, above all, an enduring testimony to Henry’s reaction to the events of 1536. As we have seen, it was probably an attempt to compensate for the emasculation of early 1536 – it was also a hugely powerful assertion of the royal supremacy, just as the creation of Cromwell as vicegerent, Mary’s submission and the 1536 promulgation of doctrine had been. The reason to assert the royal supremacy at this time was, surely, to reinforce Henry’s religious position and the entrenched nature of religious reform after the challenge posed by the Pilgrimage of Grace to these very ideas. It seems to have been a defiant, triumphant reaction to the Pilgrimage of Grace and its aftermath. This could explain both the aggressive tone of the inscription and Henry’s commanding and authoritative full-frontal glare. It was a statement of victory and strength, directed at those courtiers and councillors nearest the Crown and also probably intended to bolster Henry’s sense of his own superiority. If this reasoning is correct, the mural was probably, then, commissioned after the Crown’s reaction against the erstwhile Pilgrims when the royal victory seemed complete, probably after Aske was arrested in April 1537. It is a clear declaration of the unassailable position of the king.
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When years later, in 1541, Henry finally visited York, he came from a powerful position of victorious triumph, not negotiating defeat. He was met by 200 gentlemen and 4,000 yeomen who knelt before him, while Sir Robert Bowes, the erstwhile rebel leader, made a speech confessing their ‘unnatural, most odious and detestable offences of outrageous disobedience and traitorous rebellion’. The king had won.
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