Henry (32 page)

As it happens, this tournament is unusually fully documented: we have the original challenge and a list of the combatants, when they fought and who their opponents were, as well as another description in Hall’s
Chronicle
. And they confirm Caroz’s report at every point. Especially in terms of Henry’s own assiduity: he fought more often than anybody else, and seems to have outdone even his three star aids – Knyvet, Edward Howard and Brandon – in stamina and skill.
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* * *

But even Henry, it seems, got bored with devoting every Thursday and Monday for a month to the same kind of combat. Or perhaps he simply ran out of opponents. At any rate, just before the court left Greenwich for the summer progress, the king devised a new martial game: a fight with battle-axes in the presence of Catherine (newly emerged from her confinement for her false pregnancy) and her ladies. Henry kicked off, Hall notes, by taking on ‘one Guyot, a gentleman of Almain [Germany], a tall man and a good man of arms’. This is Sir Guyot de Heulle, one of the king’s spears. ‘And then after they had done, they marched [? matched] always two and two together, and so did their feats and enterprises every man very well.’

‘Albeit’, Hall concludes, ‘it happened the said Guyot to fight with Sir Edward Howard, which Guyot was by him striken to the ground.’
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There was always a risk with this sort of violent, one-to-one combat of hard feelings as well as hard knocks. Henry had shown himself alive to this at the time of the coronation joust. He did so again on this occasion. And he (or was it perhaps the presentational genius of Guildford?) turned the peacemaking to pageantry.

The day after the fight with battle-axes, the court had moved to the Tower, en route to Richmond and the start of the summer progress. ‘To the intent that there should be no displeasure nor malice’, Henry gave
£
133.6
s
.8
d
in gold to the combatants ‘to make a banquet among themselves’. The
banquet took place at Fishmongers’ Hall in Thames Street and – to emphasize their unity and amity – all twenty-four were dressed in ‘one suit or livery’ of yellow satin slashed with white. Even their shoes, hat-feathers and scabbards were of the same colour.

Then, after the banquet was over, they marched ‘by torchlight’ to the Tower, where they presented themselves to the king.
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It is a scene that is almost filmic in conception: a band of brothers, clad in yellow from head to toe and bathed in light – now glowing now guttering – young, united, happy and saluting their chief, who was himself the youngest, happiest and boldest of them all.

Henry, we are told, ‘took pleasure to behold them’. As well he might. In little more than a year he had made the world of ‘Amadis [of Gaul] and Lancelot, and other knights of olden times, of whom so much is written in books’, live again.

His court was Camelot and he was a new Arthur.

A
FTER THE TORCHLIT PARADE AT THE
Tower, Henry moved upriver to Richmond, before leaving for Windsor and the progress. This took him in a leisurely circuit through Berkshire, Hampshire, Dorset, and Wiltshire, then looping back to Hampshire again before returning through Surrey to Richmond.

But there was nothing in the least indolent about his leisure. According to Hall, he ‘exercis [ed] himself daily in shooting, singing, dancing, wrestling, casting of the bar [shot-put], playing at the recorders, flutes, virginals, and in setting of songs, making of ballets and did set two goodly Masses …’.
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Among the ‘ballets’ (verses) he made may well have been this. It has a claim to be his best work of poetry; it is also the most interesting psychologically and even politically:

Henry, as his daughter Elizabeth was to be after him, was a master of language. Take, for instance, the first line or refrain: ‘Though some say that youth rules me’. What does it mean? Is ‘youth’ a mere abstraction? Or is it the flesh and
blood youths – Knyvet, Howard, Brandon and Guildford – with whom Henry spent so much time and shared so many passions?

Both meanings, I think, are present. And both provided Henry’s councillors with headaches and opportunities. The two were unequally distributed, however. The opportunities were for those councillors with close connexions to Henry’s charmed circle of youth/s. This meant, in practice, Thomas Howard, earl of Surrey, knight of the Garter, and lord treasurer.

The Howards, as we have seen, had stepped smartly into the chivalric arena by assuming a predominant part in the coronation joust. Thereafter, there was no stopping them and the rewards came thick and fast. In April 1510 Thomas Howard, Surrey’s son and heir, was elected a knight of the Garter together with Henry’s political favourite, Sir Henry Marney. To have one knight of the Garter in the family was a signal honour; to have father and son as members of the order at the same time was extraordinary. A few weeks later, on 1 July, Thomas Howard and his wife Anne Plantagenet (who was Henry’s aunt) also received a generous land grant in settlement of Anne’s claims as a co-heiress of Edward IV.
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Finally, and at the same time, Henry gave Howard’s father, the earl of Surrey, his heart’s desire. The office of earl marshal had been hereditary in the dukedom of Norfolk. But the office, together with the dukedom itself, had been forfeit when the Howards fought on the wrong side at Bosworth.
Now Henry restored the earl marshalship to Surrey. He did so on less generous terms than Surrey would ideally have wished: only granting it for life and refusing to countenance any hereditary claim.
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It was enough, however. The earl marshalship carried enormous prestige as one of the three or four noble ‘great offices of state’. And it was much more than merely honorific. The earl marshal was in overall charge of the college of arms, as the collegiate body of heralds was known. The heralds, collectively and individually, were responsible for the granting and policing of the coats of arms that were the badge of belonging to the rank of gentleman. They also scored and refereed tournaments and other martial contests. Finally, the earl marshal still had a residual claim to command the royal army as deputy only to the king, and bore the marshal’s gold baton as testimony to the fact.

By his appointment, in short, Surrey found himself recognized as – under the king – the head and fount of English chivalry. For a king as chivalrous as Henry, it was the greatest honour he could bestow.

This headlong advance of Surrey and the Howard clan is, I think, the background to Polydore Vergil’s account of the politics of the first years of Henry’s reign. Vergil writes as a contemporary; he was already long resident in England, he knew all the main actors and most of the minor ones, and he was a close and shrewd observer of the political scene. He was also a bitter enemy of the man who came to dominate
that scene: Thomas Wolsey. This has led some historians to discount his evidence. But, as I have remarked before, I do not see why we should believe a man’s friends rather than his enemies. The more so when Wolsey’s apologist and servant, George Cavendish, writes (though long after the event) an account of his master’s early years and his rise to power that is strikingly similar to Polydore’s.

A complicating factor is that Polydore’s evidence has rarely been used in full. This is because the standard English translation of the
Anglica Historia
is based on Polydore’s autograph manuscript of about 1513, rather than the final printed Latin text of 1555. For obvious prudential reasons, the former excludes much of the sensational personal detail that appears only in the latter. After all, how to tell Henry VIII to his face – for the work was intended for dedication and presentation to him – how and why his principal minister had been manoeuvred into his favour? Four decades later, however, it was easy. Almost all the participants – including Henry himself – were safely dead, while Polydore was back in Italy and preparing for death himself.
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What follows is therefore based on the 1555 text, in which Vergil – unconstrained – was at last free to speak his mind.

The key to developments, as Vergil sees it, was a power struggle between the two dominant figures on Henry’s council: Thomas Howard, earl of Surrey, and Richard Foxe, bishop of Winchester and lord privy seal. ‘These men’, Vergil writes, ‘had long nursed secret quarrels between
themselves, which their rivalry made bigger and bigger every day.’

But it was more than a clash of personalities. ‘Each of them’, Vergil points out, ‘had different interests.’ Foxe was a satisfied power; Surrey, a lean and hungry one. Foxe, sitting comfortably on the vast revenues of his bishopric, was able to take a loftily disinterested view of politics, seeking only (Vergil claims) to serve the king and state. Surrey was the opposite. Since ‘his patrimony … had been shipwrecked’ in the Wars of the Roses, his aim in politics was to recover it. Which meant in turn that he put ‘his own private interests’ first in his dealings with the king.

The earl, ‘sticking determinedly to the king’s side, profitably received great kindnesses from him, which the earl might then grant, give or assign to his family or other people according to his judgment’. This is a loaded but recognizable account of the rise of the Howards as we have traced it in the first eighteen months or so of the reign. By which time it indeed seemed, as Vergil claims, that Surrey, having already ‘loaded his relatives and friends with honours and riches’, might ‘soon entirely take over the prime positions in [Henry’s] household’.
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This Foxe determined to prevent. And his instrument was Wolsey.

Thomas Wolsey would eventually make an impression on contemporaries and posterity second only to Henry himself. But it would be hard to think of a more different start in life.

Wolsey, or ‘Wulcy’ as he usually spelled his name, was born in about 1475 in Ipswich, where his father was a butcher and grazier. He was a bright boy and was early destined for what was then the only career open to talent: the church. He went to Oxford where, as he graduated BA at the age of only fifteen, he was known as the boy bachelor. By 1497 he was a fellow of Magdalen College and was ordained a priest the following year. He was then studying for a higher degree in theology. This was an odd choice if he already harboured ambitions for the sort of administrative career that had taken his soon-to-be patron Richard Foxe to the summit of political power. At first he thrived at Magdalen, becoming in quick succession bursar, master of Magdalen College School and dean of divinity. But he resigned his fellowship in about 1502.

Had he trodden on toes, as his enemies claimed? Or was he wanting to make a name for himself in the wider world?

His first leg up came from Henry’s half-blood uncle, the marquess of Dorset, whose sons Wolsey taught. This established a taste for life in a great household and he became chaplain successively to three important figures: Henry Deane, who was archbishop of Canterbury for two years before his premature death in 1503; Sir Richard Nanfan, treasurer of Calais, who died in 1507; and finally, after Nanfan’s death, Henry VII.

The king sent him on two or three diplomatic missions. The outcome was not particularly successful but the whirl
wind energy he showed got him his first major promotion in the church to dean of Lincoln in February 1509.

Two months later, Henry VII was dead and Wolsey was still only royal chaplain.
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He did, however, already have a certain reputation at court. He was, notes Vergil, ‘learned in letters … a wise man … [and] also bold and absolutely prepared to do anything’.

This, Foxe decided, was the man to take on Surrey: Wolsey was a hot iron waiting to be struck, and Foxe, with good reason, fancied himself as a human blacksmith. (‘Here in England’, Henry told the Spanish ambassador, ‘they think [Winchester] is a fox. And such is his name.’) So, ‘although he did not know [Wolsey] particularly well’, Foxe sang his praises to Henry. Then he primed Wolsey’s ambition. That was easily done. Finally, it remained to find a suitable opening. This time death, which had so often hindered Wolsey’s career by removing his patrons, struck in his favour. Thomas Hobbes, who had been appointed royal almoner at the beginning of Henry’s reign, died in September 1509 and Foxe ‘took care’ that Wolsey should be his successor.
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The almoner was in charge of the charitable doles of the royal household; his office involved personal attendance on the king and he was also a regular, if junior, member of the royal council.

It was a start.

* * *

Wolsey’s first known appearance as a councillor came about 20 November 1509 when he countersigned, as the most junior member of the board, a warrant for the issuing of a proclamation. Here, too, Foxe talked his protégé up, making sure that ‘he should be received with approval and should be consulted in the council with the chief men’. He also ‘made much of him publicly as well as privately by mentioning the man’s discretion, vigilance and his excellent hard work’. ‘Mr Wolsey
Elimosinarius
(Almoner)’ duly appears at the unusually weighty meeting of the council on 21 June 1510 to consider the duke of Buckingham’s claim to be hereditary constable of England.
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Not for the last time, the butcher’s son sat in judgment on England’s premier peer.

The council was not the ultimate source of authority, however; the king was. Henry’s powers might be veiled because of his age, but time would soon correct that. Wolsey grasped these truths with his usual incisiveness and it was to the king – and the king’s young friends – that he bent his remarkable powers of charm and persuasion.

‘Wolsey’, Vergil continues, ‘now began to stick closely to the king’s side, and it is wonderful to relate in how short a time he came to be accepted both by him and by his retinue of young men, which he kept as his favourites.’ For Wolsey’s priestly vows sat lightly upon him. He had probably begun his relationship with Mistress Lark in the last months of Henry VII’s reign and she would bear him at least two chil
dren. Now, according to Vergil, ‘since there was no reason for the appearance of seriousness’, ‘his priestly persona was discarded’ almost entirely. Instead, ‘together with the young men, he very often played the lute, danced, held many charming conversations, laughed, joked and generally amused himself’.
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Here it is worth remembering one rather overlooked episode in Wolsey’s early career. He had been a schoolmaster, if only for two terms, and tutor to the aristocratic boys of the Dorset household. And teachers, if they are any good (and Wolsey tended to be very good at anything he turned his hand to), have to understand the young.

It seems clear that Wolsey did.

He applied this knowledge above all to Henry himself. And there was more to it than ‘playfulness’. ‘Because he could act more conveniently out of sight of witnesses’, Vergil claims, ‘he made a temple of all the pleasures at his house’, where the king was a frequent visitor.

And there, amid sensual delights, Wolsey inculcated a series of maxims into his royal pupil. ‘That the state was being badly run by many governors, each of whom was serving his own ends’. ‘That the management of the kingdom’s government was safer with one man rather than many’. That Henry ‘would be better suited, in the flower of his youth, to turning his mind to literature and the occasional honest pleasure, rather than being weighed down with the anxieties [of business]’. ‘That it was right for the
government of the kingdom to be committed to someone other than Henry himself until he came to maturity’.