Henry VIII (17 page)

In 1533, Reginald Pole, the King's cousin, declared that Anne Boleyn, in refusing to sleep with Henry, had borne in mind “how soon he was sated with those who had served him as his mistress.”
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The King's physician, Dr. John Chamber, described his master as being “overly fond of women” and given to “lustful dreams.”
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Even William Thomas, who wrote a laudatory biography of his master around the time of Henry's death, admitted that “it cannot be denied but that he was a very fleshly man, and no marvel, for albeit his father brought him up in good learning, yet after he fell into all riot and overmuch love of women.”

Wolsey was accused by his enemies of being “the King's bawd, showing him what women were most wholesome and best of complexions,”
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and although he vigorously denied the charge, it is not entirely implausible. A later Catholic observer claimed that “King Henry gave his mind to three notorious vices—lechery, covetousness and cruelty, but the two latter issued and sprang out of the former.”
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The Elizabethan courtier Sir Robert Naunton later stated what was by then well known, that Henry never spared a man in his anger nor a woman in his lust.
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For all this, Henry considered himself a paragon of virtue, and it is often said that, compared with other rulers such as Edward IV and Francis I, he was. But the truth is that he was an inhibited man who was far more discreet about his amours than most kings. The fact that he had separate apartments from the Queen, and visited her bed only at his own instigation, made covert infidelity that much easier. Despite what Pole claimed, some of Henry's affairs went on in private for years, as will be seen. There is evidence that he used Greenwich Castle, the former Duke Humphrey's Tower, which he refurbished in 1526 and renamed Mireflore, as a residence for his mistresses.
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Henry was never coarse in speech, nor did he appreciate bawdy jokes. Once, when travelling by barge to Greenwich Castle to visit “a fair lady whom he loved and lodged in the tower of the park” (her identity is unknown), he was “disposed to be merry” and challenged Sir Andrew Flammock to complete a verse for him. Henry began it:

Within this tower
There lieth a flower
That hath my heart . . .

 

Whereupon the foul-minded Flammock added:

Within this hour
She pissed full sour
And let a fart.

 

Henry was so offended that he spluttered, “Begone, varlet!” and waved the man out of his sight.
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In 1542, Sir William Paget felt he ought to apologise for having to report King Francis I's “unseemly” declaration that he would rather “give his daughter to be a strumpet of the bordello” than face the Emperor in battle.
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This innate prudishness manifested itself in other ways. Henry, who had three marriages annulled, angrily censured his sister Margaret when she divorced her husband in order to marry another man. He was harsh on the prostitutes who followed his armies, and rigorous in suppressing the brothels that had disfigured the Southwark shore of the Thames for centuries.

Henry could be openly demonstrative towards the women he loved, but never embarrassingly so. It has been suggested that he was not an inspiring or romantic lover, but his letters to Anne Boleyn, which will be quoted later, prove that he was capable of deep passion and sentimental feeling. The fact that Anne Boleyn held him off for at least six years proves not that Henry lacked ardour, but that he was too much of a knight and a gentleman to resort to rape.

The King acknowledged only one bastard, although rumour credited him with more; this was probably the result of luck or carefulness. Some writers have suggested that it implies a low level of fertility, but that does not take account of the fact that Henry repeatedly impregnated his first two wives. It has also been suggested that, given his assertion that two of his marriages were incestuous and therefore unlawful,
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Henry was the victim of an Oedipus complex, but in fact this was a quite legitimate plea to make in each case, and not enough is known of Henry's relationship with his mother to justify such a claim.

One tale told about the King was certainly apocryphal. Sir Thomas More's nephew, William Rastell, and the Jesuit exile Nicholas Sander, who in 1585 wrote a Catholic treatise damning Henry and his second wife, Anne Boleyn, both claimed that Anne was the fruit of an early affair between the King and her mother, Elizabeth Howard. The story was certainly current at court, and in 1535 a Member of Parliament, Sir George Throckmorton, accused Henry to his face of “meddling” with both Anne's mother and her sister Mary.

“Never with the mother,” Henry said.

“Nor never with the sister either,” lied Cromwell,
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who was standing by and must have been well aware that the King had had an affair with Mary Boleyn (of which more will be related later). But Henry was probably under ten when Anne was conceived, and could not possibly have been her father. Yet there may have been smoke without fire. Despite his denial, an early liaison, while he was perhaps in his teens, with Lady Boleyn cannot be ruled out.

14

“Rather Divine Than Human”

In July 1510, Henry stayed at Windsor Castle on the first stage of his annual progress. Windsor was one of the most ancient of royal residences; it had been built by William the Conqueror around 1070 and reconstructed as a formidable stone fortress by Henry II in the twelfth century. The Plantagenet royal lodgings, laid out around three courtyards in the Upper Ward (on the site of the present state apartments), were still in use, although they had been extended and modernised in the fourteenth century by Edward III, who built the imposing St. George's Hall (then half its present length) with its steep timber roof and private chapel at one end. Edward IV had modernised the royal lodgings, adding a Great Watching Chamber, among other improvements. Henry VII had added a tower with more luxurious accommodation, featuring oriel windows and flat battened ceilings decorarated with quatrefoils and rose bosses; its first floor, much remodelled, now houses the Royal Library. In the room next to the King's bedchamber was a wall painting depicting the Knights of Malta besieging Rhodes in 1480 and 1522.
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The adjacent Queen's range boasted a privy chamber with a ceiling studded with tiny mirrors.
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Outside there were gardens, of which details are scarce, and a vineyard.

Windsor was still essentially a mediaeval castle rather than a Tudor palace, and for this reason Henry used it less than his more modern houses, and then only in the warmer months, when he came for the hunting in Windsor Great Park and Windsor Forest. The only major work he carried out here would be the rebuilding of the main gateway to the castle in 1510–1511; it bears his arms with the pomegranate of Katherine of Aragon. He also built a tennis court, perhaps the one at the foot of the Round Tower shown in seventeenth-century views of the castle.
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St. George's Chapel, begun by Edward IV in 1475, continued by Henry VII, who rebuilt the adjoining Lady Chapel, and completed by Henry VIII in 1528, is one of the finest examples of late Perpendicular architecture in England. It boasts magnificent stone vaulting and outstanding stained-glass windows, one featuring seventy-five figures of saints, kings, and princes. In the choir are the fine stalls of the Knights of the Garter. Those great protagonists of the Wars of the Roses, Henry VI and Edward IV, lie buried here. Henry VIII erected a richly carved timber closet with an oriel window above Edward IV's chantry chapel, from which Queen Katherine could watch services and Garter ceremonies; her pomegranate badge features in the carvings.

While at Windsor the King expended his energies in “exercising himself daily in shooting, singing, dancing, wrestling, casting of the bar, playing at the recorder, flute [and] virginals, and in setting of songs, making of ballads, and did set two goodly masses, every one of them five parts, which were sung oftentimes in his chapel and afterwards in divers other places.”
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Like all the Tudors, Henry was passionate about music, which was by his time a necessary adjunct to royal magnificence. It dominated his life: wherever he went, in public or in private, at state occasions, at his entrance and departure, and especially at mealtimes, minstrels played, choirs sang, or fanfares sounded. Making music was also a essential accomplishment for his courtiers, many of whom were competent composers, players, or singers; a fine voice could be decisive in gaining a gentleman a post in the Privy Chamber. Many nobles employed their own bands of musicians, who performed in the minstrels' galleries above their dining halls.

Foreigners were ecstatic about the music they heard at the English court, the beautiful voices of the choristers and the virtuoso playing of the musicians, which they compared very favourably with the music at the French court, where the singing master could not read music, even when he was sober.

Much music was composed under the auspices of the Church, and it was in the sixteenth century that sacred music reached new heights of grandeur and artistic intricacy in the hands of a few gifted composers under royal patronage. Many compositions took the form of motets, Latin choral pieces in several parts, which were precursors of the anthem.

There were advances, too, in secular music, which was growing in popularity; yet although the Tudor age was to witness the birth of chamber music, little secular music of note survives from the period before the development of the madrigal in Elizabeth's reign. At the beginning of the century, English music still imitated the stately style of the fifteenthcentury composer John Dunstable. Yet thanks to the incalculable effect of Henry's interest and his generous patronage of foreign musicians such as the Italian Bassano family
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and the lutenist Philip van Wilder, it was changing, becoming increasingly influenced by newer forms from Flanders, France, and Italy. Under Henry VIII, English music progressed from the formal mediaeval style to one more florid and versatile. Most early Tudor music was polyphonic, having many voices or sounds. But traditional ballads were still very popular, and Henry himself composed them, although he disapproved of their use as a political propaganda tool.

Early sixteenth-century music was less sophisticated than that of later centuries. Few instruments survive, and sheet music is poorly annotated, so modern musicians have to “realise” each piece on reconstructed instruments, and this sometimes involves guesswork. Instruments were not as finely tuned, and modern scales not developed until later in the century. It was during Henry's reign, in 1530, that the first book of music was printed in England, by Wynkyn de Worde; it contains various secular part-songs.
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Sacred music at court was the province of the highly trained, elite choir of the Chapel Royal, which sang mass daily and performed regularly for the King, especially when he wished to impress guests. Their first known performance for him was in 1510, in the White Hall at Westminster.
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In 1515, when Henry invited Giustinian to attend high mass in the chapel royal, the awestruck Italian reported that it was “gloriously sung by His Majesty's choristers, whose voices are really rather divine than human. They did not chant but sang like angels, and as for the counter-bass voices, I do not think they have their equals in the world.”
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There were about a dozen boy choristers, who were head-hunted by the King and William Cornish, Master of the Chapel. Since the reign of Richard III, promising boys had been impressed from cathedral schools and church choirs and expected to dedicate their lives to training their voices and learning at least one instrument. A child purchased by Henry from a stranger in 1516 for £40 (£12,000) may well have been chosen for his musical aptitude.
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The choristers lodged with the Master, whose duty it was to instruct them in plainchant and harmony. Since the choir did not have a regular organist, the “Children” often sang unaccompanied. There were adult choristers, too, Gentlemen in Ordinary of the Choir, whose voices had survived the transition of puberty; they played the organ in turns. Boys who were unable to continue in the choir when their voices broke were found other posts or places at university. Every member of the Chapel Royal might be required to take part in court entertainments, or turn his hand to composing. Most of the music sung by the Chapel Royal was composed by its members, notably Robert Fairfax and Cornish, and later the great Thomas Tallis.

There was to be friendly rivalry between the choir of the Chapel Royal and Wolsey's choristers. The King, or perhaps Cornish, devised a contest after which Henry declared that Wolsey's singers had “more surely handled it,” whereupon Wolsey felt obliged to release “young Robin,” the boy with the “craftiest descant,” to his master.
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The King employed twenty-five well-paid professional secular musicians and singers,
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several of them foreigners whom he had enticed to England. Their expertise set the musical standards for the court. The King also retained a number of traditional minstrels, who were under the direction of Hugh Woodhouse, Master of the King's Minstrels. At least eighteen came from Flanders, Germany, France, or Italy, and were paid 4d (£5) a day.
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One minstrel, Robert Reynolds, was Welsh; another, Hans Nagel, is known to have acted as a spy for the King in France.
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All royal musicians were members of the Chamber, but only a privileged few, who comprised “The King's Musick,”
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had access to the privy chamber, where they entertained Henry in his leisure hours. The rest worked in the presence chamber.

A drawing attributed to Hans Holbein shows five royal musicians playing on a balcony: one blows a trumpet, one a sackbut,
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and the others three recorders.
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Another contemporary illustration, from Henry's illuminated psalter of about 1540,
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depicts a band of musicians playing a pipe and tabor, a trumpet, a harp, and a dulcimer; such a group was known as a consort—an Old English word for “concert,” meaning a band of usually four to six players playing in an ensemble. A whole consort was one in which all the instruments were of one kind, such as a set of viols; a broken consort had different instruments
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and was the type preferred for indoor court entertainments.

Of approximately sixty musicians and minstrels on the royal payroll, sixteen were trumpeters,
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and in 1509, a Mr. Peter was Marshal of the Trumpets. Philip van Wilder, Zuan Piero of Venice, and the gifted Patrec were the King's chief lutenists and “Blind More” his harpist, while one of his favourite singers was James Hill, whom he kept always about him later in the reign.

The Dutchman Philip van Wilder was one of the most famous musicians of the period. In recognition of his skill, the King appointed him a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber and paid him a higher stipend than any other court musician. Van Wilder not only played but wrote songs, looked after Henry's musical instruments, took charge of the other musicians of the Chamber, formed his own group of “singing men and children,” and still found time to teach the royal children.
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Many musicians resorted to the court in search of patronage, and not all were lucky. There was the sad story of a Venetian, Zuan da Leze, who was skilled on the clavicembalo, a type of dulcimer. He was so certain that the King of England would want his services and remunerate him appropriately that in 1525 he purchased the best instrument money could buy and travelled to England, where he got the opportunity to play for the King. But Henry merely thanked him and sent him away with a small purse of money. Devastated, da Leze committed suicide.
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No other English king ever displayed such musical talent as Henry VIII. That he had real ability is patently clear. He sang “fairly” (i.e., well)
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in a clear, high tenor voice. This high voice was remarked upon: in 1540, it was said that his daughter Mary “had a voice more man-like for a woman than he for a man.”
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In an age in which most people played music by ear, Henry “sang from the book at sight.”
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He once paid £20 (£6,000) to Robert Fairfax for a book of “prick-song,” or annotated music.
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The King and his circle of amateur aristocratic performers would often while away their leisure hours by making music in the privy chamber, but they do not seem to have performed in public, because “a gentleman singing in a common audience appaireth his estimation.”
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Among the most popular turns were the King's own compositions and the part-songs composed by Fairfax, especially “Behold the Sovereign Seed.” It appears that vocal music was more favoured than instrumental music, and that singers usually performed in groups, rather than alone.
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In the British Library there is a manuscript containing a two-part double canon written in 1516 in honour of Henry VIII.
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One favourite court song, “My Sovereign Lord,” celebrated the King's prowess in the tiltyard. Henry was also fond of duetting with Sir Peter Carew on “freeman's songs” such as “By the Banks as I Lay” and “As I Walked the Wood So Wild.”
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The King was “a good musician”
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who, according to Sebastian Giustinian, played “on almost every instrument,” performing particularly well “on the lute and virginals.”
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He also played the regal (a kind of portable organ), the recorder, and the cornett,
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and a picture in his Psalter shows him playing the harp.
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Henry practised on his instruments “day and night.”
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His large collection was looked after by the Keeper of the King's Instruments. In 1515, Giustinian's secretary, Nicolo Sagudino, was shown a room “containing a number of organs, virginals, flutes and other instruments.”
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At his death, Henry's collection included 5 cornemuses, or drones (bagpipes), 19 viols, 20 regals, 14 virginals, 2 clavichords, 26 lutes, 65 flutes, 7 citterns,
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15 shawms,
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10 sackbuts, and 154 recorders.
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Some instruments were adorned with precious metals and gems, and most had their own cases of leather or velvet. Henry was fascinated by the technology of instruments, and was always eager to try novel ones. In 1542, he sent to Vienna for a pair of Turkish-style drums that could be played on horseback, and he later acquired “a virginal that goeth with a wheel without being played upon,”
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which presumably worked on a barrel and pin mechanism. The King was also a “fair” composer.
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Thirty-three of his compositions, comprising thirteen instrumental pieces and twenty three- or four-part popular songs such as “Pastime with Good Company,” “Green Groweth the Holly,” “Alas, What Shall I Do for Love?” and “Whereto Should I Express My Inward Heaviness?” were collated in the so-called Henry VIII Manuscript, where each is inscribed (not in Henry's hand, but probably by one of his gentlemen), “the King, H.VIII.”
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The manuscript was once in the possession of Sir Henry Guildford, Comptroller of the Household. All these compositions are in the mediaeval tradition and probably date from the early years of the reign; research has shown that a number of them, including the popular Flemish tune “Taunder Naken,” are merely rearrangements of other composers' works. Nowadays, opinion is divided as to their merit, modern ears being more critical than those of Henry's courtiers. Nevertheless, in their own time Henry's songs were applauded and enjoyed widespread fame; in 1521, Dr. John Longland, the Lord High Almoner, used “Pastime with Good Company” as the text for a sermon.