Henry (18 page)

Still worse, from Henry VII’s point of view, his own intelligence confirmed Suffolk’s optimism about his chances of success. For, early in 1506 – that is, just eighteen months after Henry’s move to court – information reached the king on the state of opinion among the English elite.
14

It made grim reading.

The information took the form of an informer’s report of a series of conversations among the senior officers of the Calais garrison which had taken place the previous Septem
ber. Like Suffolk, the report claimed, these leading officials took for granted that the king’s death was only a matter of time: ‘For the king’s grace,’ one had said, ‘is but a weak man and sickly, not likely to be no long lived man.’
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And, like Suffolk again, with the king’s death imminent, they looked to the future – and, in some cases, to Suffolk himself.

Most blatant in her allegiance to the pretender was Lucy, Lady Browne. As the daughter of John, marquess of Montague, she was a Neville and ‘a proud, high-minded woman, [who] loveth not the king’s grace’. Instead, she prized her kinship to Suffolk, ‘to whom … she will do all the pleasure and help she can do in the world’. What made her really dangerous was the fact that her husband, Sir Anthony Browne, was the lieutenant of Calais castle. This was the key to the town’s defences. And it was a key which Lady Browne was fully determined to hand over to the pretender: ‘If anything should come to your grace other than well,’ the informer claimed, ‘she would let [Suffolk in] by the postern of the castle to the destruction of us all.’
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Lady Browne’s overt partisanship was unique. What was more usual, and more insidious, was a smug fence-sitting. Both Lady Browne’s husband, Sir Anthony, and Sir Nicholas Vaux, the lieutenant of the flanking fortress of Guisnes, had boasted of their ability to weather any dynastic storm. ‘They had two good holds to resort to, the which they said,’ the informer reported, ‘should be sure to make their peace, how so ever the world turn.’ In other words, because they were in
charge of two key fortresses, they would be able to negotiate satisfactory terms with the new regime, whatever its nature might be and whoever might be its king.
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This kind of opportunism was scarcely admirable. But it was not very culpable either, and it had become the way in which most of the political nation had survived the ups and downs of the Wars of the Roses. But what if it went to the very heart of the Tudor regime? That was the informer’s most sensational charge, when he raised doubts about the loyalty of Giles, Lord Daubeney, lord chamberlain, captain of the guard and governor of Calais. ‘Put it that he be true as any man living to the king’s grace now,’ he insinuated, ‘yet change of worlds hath caused change of men’s minds, and that hath been seen many times.’
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Would Daubeney prove a turncoat with the rest?

The revelation which touched Henry most directly was already old news. Back in May 1501 – when Arthur was still very much alive and Henry himself merely duke of York – Henry VII had fallen seriously ill at Wanstead, a hunting lodge in Essex on the edge of Epping Forest that was a favourite of his. For a time, it would seem, his life had been despaired of, and talk naturally turned to the succession: ‘what world should be if his grace [Henry VII] departed and who should have rule in England then’. One of the Calais officials chanced to have been present during these conversations, when ‘many divers and great personages’ had considered the possibilities. Some, the informer reported, had put
forward the claims of the duke of Buckingham, ‘saying that he was a noble man and would be a royal ruler’. Others supported Suffolk, ‘and so gave him great praise … likewise’.

‘But none of them,’ the informer stated flatly, ‘spake of my lord prince [Arthur].’
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Arthur was then fourteen, the same age as Henry had reached in 1505. If Henry VII – as seemed increasingly likely – were to die in the next year or two, would Henry’s claims be as comprehensively disregarded as Arthur’s had been in 1501? And was there anything that Henry VII could do about it? Come to that, was there anything that Henry himself could do about it either?

H
ENRY’S MOST VALUABLE PIECE OF JEWELLERY
as prince of Wales – indeed probably his most precious single possession – was ‘a cross set with a table diamond and three good pearls, given by the queen’. Valued at
£
13.6s.8
d
, it was worth over three times as much as ‘the proper ring, gold enamelled red and black with a fair pointed diamond’ which had been given to Henry by Edmund Dudley in a vain attempt to win his favour and was promptly lost by Henry at Langley near Woodstock when he was staying there with his father in September 1507.
1

As both a luxury item and a religious symbol, Henry’s jewelled cross would have reminded him of his mother twice over. For Elizabeth of York was as pious as she was fond of the finer things in life. Probably, when she was near to term with Henry, she had sent to Westminster Abbey for the
miraculous girdle of the Blessed Virgin Mary, ‘which women with child were wont to girdle with’. Certainly she did for her last, fatal pregnancy in 1503. In 1497, as Henry’s father prepared for the final show-down with Perkin Warbeck, she had sought both solace and safety by going on pilgrimage to Walsingham in Norfolk. And she had taken Henry with her. When she could not go on pilgrimage herself, she paid others to perform the pious deed on her behalf. In March 1502, for instance, she gave a certain Richard Milner 10 pence a day to go on pilgrimage to seventeen shrines in London and the south-east, and a similar amount to another priest to make her offerings at eighteen more holy sites, stretching from Windsor in the west to – once more – Walsingham in East Anglia.
2

All this initiated Henry into the magical, mysterious, many-coloured world of late medieval piety, with its sounds, smells, miracle-working images and extravagant devotions. For several decades, indeed, he was an enthusiastic participant. He went on pilgrimage at least three times as king: to Our Lady of Walsingham in Norfolk in 1511 and to the shrine of Master John Schorne at North Marston in Buckingham in July 1511, and again a decade later in May 1521. As late as Good Friday 1539, he crawled to the cross, ‘his own person kneeling upon his grace’s knees’, while his will, as well as invoking the aid of the Virgin and ‘all the Holy Company of Heaven’, also made abundant provisions for intercessory prayers for his soul in purgatory.

In short, with all the future gyrations of his religious belief, Henry never entirely escaped the pious practices of his youth.
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We can enter these best, however, through another figure of Henry’s earlier life: William Thomas, groom of his privy chamber. Thomas, as we have already seen, had served Arthur in a similar capacity. He did not transfer to Henry’s service immediately on Arthur’s death, and does not appear in the list of his household in February 1503. But, probably with Henry’s move to court in July 1504, Thomas was recalled and sworn as his servant. Thereafter, with the head-start of his three years’ experience in Arthur’s princely household, he prospered exceedingly and became one of the key figures in Henry’s personal service.
4

The two evidently became personally close as well – close enough, indeed, to exchange prayers. ‘William Thomas,’ wrote Henry in a ‘bede’ or prayer roll, ‘I pray you pray for me, your loving master: Prince Henry.’
5

The roll is a long, narrow strip of parchment, about eleven feet long and five inches wide, with a series of illuminations of sacred subjects interspersed with prayers and other aids to devotion. The strange shape is designed to make the roll readily portable, for it was not only to be read but
used
: as an aid to devotion indeed, but also as a magical charm or amulet.

Henry’s royal badges – two Tudor roses, the ostrich plume of the prince of Wales, and his ‘wife’ Catherine of
Aragon’s emblem of a sheaf of arrows – stand at the head, on either side of a washed-out and unfortunately unidentifiable coat of arms, which may belong to the original donor.
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Then comes the first illumination of the Trinity, with a thirty-line long Latin prayer for victory over enemies. Next is an illumination of the crucifixion, with Christ hanging between the two thieves.

Here there is a marked change of tone. The Trinity might be the central theological doctrine of Christianity. But the crucifixion, with the image of the suffering Christ, was its burning, emotional heart. And so it is here. ‘If ye be in sin or tribulation,’ the rubric – which indeed is written in red ink – reads, ‘kneel down upon your knees before the rood [cross], and pray God to have mercy on you, and that He will forgive you your sins, and to grant your petition as He granted paradise to the thief, desire your petition rightfully.’

Then the supplicating Christian is taught how to use each and every part of the image in the illumination to increase the fervour – and hence the efficacy – of his prayers. First he must look at Christ’s feet, pierced and bleeding with the nails; next at His side, laid open and gushing from the
coup de
grâce
of the centurion’s lance, and so on through each of the Five Wounds. And as he looks, he must feel and pray. ‘Devotedly,’ the rubric continues, ‘behold the feet [of Christ] and say,
Adoramus te
Jhesu
Christe, et
benedicimus
tibi, quia per
sanctam crucem redemisti mundum, misere nobis
[‘We worship you Jesus Christ and bless you, since by the holy cross you have redeemed the world, have mercy upon us’]. Then say
this psalm … And then say this anthem … And then say
Pater Noster
[‘Our Father’] and
Ave Maria
[‘Hail Mary’].’ Next the worshipper should ‘steadfastly behold the sides … And so behold the hands … And then behold the head’, gashed and bloody with the crown of thorns pressed into the sacred, suffering flesh. And with each lingering, pitiful scrutiny, the rubric directs, the prayers and petitions are to be repeated in full.

Only then can the suppliant venture to contemplate the image in its full, awful entirety: ‘And so, with a whole mind to all the body, say
Adoramus
…’

Credo in Deum
(‘I believe in God’), the cycle of prayer ends.

Under this, Henry wrote his inscription, with its plea for Thomas’s prayers. Did they pray together, prince and groom, prostrating themselves before the image, reciting the prayers and each feeding the other’s fervour?

It seems almost certain.

If so, they performed what is known as a ‘spiritual exercise’. Like modern physical exercise, it involved endless repetition, and with the similar purpose of improving tone, endurance and strength – but of the mind and spirit, not of the body and muscles.

And – just as with weightlifting – there were rewards and prizes.

* * *

Some of these are spelled out – and in great detail – in the inscription accompanying the next illumination, which shows Christ in the sepulchre. He sits, rather than reclines, and blood spouts from the sacred wounds in the side, hands, feet and head.

Once more the English rubric directs how the image is to be used and with what effect:

The ‘52,712 years and 40 days of pardon’ was the reduction in the amount of time to be spent in ‘purgatory’ that would result from fulfilling the rubric. ‘Purgatory’ was the name given by the medieval church to the intermediate state between heaven and hell. Like hell, it was a place of suffering. But, unlike hell, the suffering was for a specific time, and not for eternity; and it was aimed not to punish the soul, as in hell, but to cleanse or ‘purge’ it to fit it eventually for entry into heaven.

Purgatory, in short, was the natural destination of Everyman: the ordinary fallible human being who had sinned too much to be immediately received into heaven, but not so grievously as to be condemned to hell. This meant that reducing the time to be spent in purgatory became one of the
central concerns of late-medieval piety. Two of the means available appear in the rubric. The first was the performance of specific acts of piety or ‘good works’, like the contemplation of the holy image and the recital of the prayers; the other was the invocation of saints, in this case, St Gregory.

We shall come across many more, including those that could be performed even after Everyman was dead and his soul already in purgatory.

The fourth image also shows Christ on the cross, but alone and with two angels beneath holding a cloth on which drops the blood from His wounds. ‘This cross,’ the rubric declares, ‘15 times moten [moved or multiplied] is the length of our Lord Jesus Christ.’ Here we change gear again: the sacred becomes magical, and the image turns into a charm, whose mighty powers are listed by the rubric:

It would also work its magic for women who, unlike Henry’s mother, were unable to borrow the Westminster relic of the Virgin’s girdle:

Another, even more powerful, image/charm appears beneath in the form of the three nails of the passion. They are about four inches long, the two outer nails impaling the hands and feet, while the centre nail bears the wounded heart. ‘Pope Innocent,’ the rubric states, ‘hath granted to every man and woman that beareth upon them the length of these nails, saying daily
5 Pater Noster, 5 Ave Maria
, and 1
Credo
, shall have seven gifts.’ These too are enumerated:

• The first is that he shall not die no sudden death.
  
• The second is that he shall not be slain with no sword nor knife.
  
• The third is that he shall not be poisoned.
  
• The fourth, his enemies shall not overcome him.
  
• The fifth is he shall have sufficient goods to his life’s end.
  
• The sixth is he shall not die without all the sacraments of holy church.
  
• The seventh is that he shall be defended from all evil spirits, pestilence, fevers, and all other infirmities on land and on water.
  

There follows an image of the Virgin and Child; then six more illuminations of saints, each with his proper anthems and invocations: St Michael, St George, St Erasmus, St Christopher, St Anthony and St Armagil of Brittany.

With this last we come back once more to Henry and his own family circle. The ‘life and legend [of St Armagil]’, the rubric explains, ‘was brought out of Brittany at the instance of the king our sovereign lord, Henry VII.’ For long ago, back in his years of exile, Henry’s father had nearly been shipwrecked by storms off the coast of Brittany. He had prayed to St Armagil and had been saved. In gratitude, when he became king, he introduced the saint’s cult into England. His feast day of 16 August was added to the calendar of the English church in 1498; his image, which shows him, as on Prince Henry’s roll, leading a dragon by a stole wrapped round its neck, was painted on the reredos of the altar at Romsey Abbey; and statues of him were carved in Henry VII’s chapel at Westminster Abbey and on John Morton’s tomb at Canterbury.

Morton, cardinal, archbishop and lord chancellor, was the coolest head among the English statesmen of the age. If Morton subscribed to the cult of saints, with their lives and legends, their gruesome martyrdoms, their miracles and wonder-working powers, what could not be allowed to an impressionable teenage boy like Henry?

But what, equally, might Henry’s reaction be if his belief in their magic – so abundantly testified to by this bede-roll – faded?