Henry VIII's Last Victim (6 page)

Apart from the Grace, meals were usually conducted in silence and bad manners were not brooked. One contemporary book of etiquette forbade coughing, retching, hiccuping, belching and scratching – ‘put not your hands in your hosen your codware for to claw’. Another directed:

Scratch not thy head with thy fingers

when thou art at thy meat;

nor spit you over the table board;

see thou doest not this forget.

Pick not thy teeth with thy knife

nor with thy finger’s end,

but take a stick, or some clean thing,

then do you not offend.

If that your teeth be putrefied,

me think it is no right

to touch the meat other should eat;

it is no cleanly sight.

. . . .

Blow not your nose on the napkin

where you should wipe your hand

but cleanse it in your handkercher,

then pass you not your hand.
⁴⁷

Henry had evidently learnt all this by the age of six when he was expected to host formal meals in his parents’ absence. On 16 September 1523, for example, the Earl of Essex called at Tendring Hall with four servants. He was given dinner in the Great Chamber with little Henry, dressed in his finest clothes, perched at the head of the table.
⁴⁸

Early Tudor aristocrats consumed about 4,500 calories a day, around three-quarters of which was meat.
⁴⁹
Foreigners often baulked at such
a heavy diet, but as one Englishman explained to an enquiring Italian, ‘as the subtle air of Italy doth not allow you to feed grossly, so the gross air of England doth not allow us to feed subtly’.
⁵⁰
Contemporaries were just as diligent as we are today in their search for a healthy diet. The
Dyetary of Helth
recommended garlic to destroy bacteria and almonds to ease digestion. Mandrake was said to be an effective aid to conception; effective that is, until one of its other properties kicked in: ‘it doth provoke men to sleep’.
⁵¹

The Howard household books contain detailed entries for all Henry’s meals. For breakfast he either had chicken or mutton while dinner and supper regularly consisted of an assortment of beef, lamb, pig (including the head and trotters), chicken, veal, venison, goose, rabbit, capon, duck, pheasant, pigeon, crane and swan, all washed down with weak beer, water being considered unsafe. Although the family did not have pudding in the sense of a separate course, they did occasionally treat themselves to custards, nuts, jellies, gingerbread, apples, pears and pomegranates. On Fridays and Saturdays, during Lent and on Rogation days, Henry ate only fish and dairy products, though he was exempted from his mother’s stricter abstentions from meat on Wednesdays and from breakfast and supper on the holy days.
⁵²
In addition to the more common types of fish, the Howards were able to obtain fresh oysters, crayfish and caviar from Colchester, Yarmouth and Norwich.

If Lent was a time of abstinence, then Christmas was indisputably a time for indulgence. Then, as now, the birth of Christ was celebrated with much merriment and was a time for families and friends to gather and rejoice. In December 1523, as the halls of Hunsdon were decked with holly and ivy, one can imagine the mounting excitement of the six-year-old Henry. But on 22 December he could only wave as his parents rode away to celebrate Christmas with the King. The return of ‘my Lord’s yeomen’ from Windsor on Christmas Eve can hardly have eased Henry’s sense of abandonment. He spent the whole of Christmas Day in the nursery, taking all his meals there, the only concession to the occasion being ‘ten great birds’ for dinner. Once the servants had attended to him, they rushed down to the Hall, where the rest of the household was celebrating what was, no doubt, a livelier affair. The Howards could usually expect at least one or two visitors on a normal day, far more at Christmas. On this day, however, there were none at all.

On Boxing Day the local parson dropped in, perhaps to check on
the Howard children. The following day five ‘players’ or actors called at Hunsdon and performed to an audience of Henry, his siblings and servants, the parson, two men of the county, and three men of the town.
⁵³
Perhaps the parson had taken pity on the children, alone at Christmas, and arranged some local entertainment. Perhaps the players were an itinerant troupe of actors touring the county or, most likely, Thomas and Elizabeth Howard had made provision for some interludes for their children’s edification. These were short, dramatic pieces, based on the Scriptures and considering the date of their performance – the eve of the Feast of the Holy Innocents – it is possible that they included a re-enactment of King Herod’s slaughter of the infants at Bethlehem.

Thomas and Elizabeth returned to Hunsdon two days after Twelfth Night and a week later Thomas left again for the North. While it would be unwise to overemphasise Henry’s sense of abandonment in an age when aristocratic parents regularly left their children at home for prolonged periods, the extent of his father’s absences was extreme even by the standards of the day. Henry was acutely aware that he was his father’s heir and that great things were expected of him. Believing, perhaps, that he had not done enough to satisfy him, Henry became desperately anxious to please, ever hopeful of his father’s approval.

But Thomas Howard, as Holbein’s famous portrait of him (plate 1) illustrates, was not an easy man to please. The work confirms contemporary descriptions that he was short and spare. His gaunt face is dominated by a great beak of a nose, arched brows, heavy lids and thin, pursed lips. The artist has also managed to capture something of the discontentment that pervades his sitter, as if, at any moment, Thomas might let out a weary sigh as was ‘his wonted fashion’.
⁵⁴
Although he is decked out in ermined finery, with the chain of St George around his neck, the Earl Marshal’s gold baton in his right hand and the Lord Treasurer’s white staff in his left, he seems distinctly unimpressed by the symbols of his status. Indeed, the ermine weighs him down, the chain constricts him and his hands are bound by the staves of office. He is consumed by politics. Only his eyes are free to warn the viewer of the heavy burden of unlimited ambition.

Having grown up in the aftermath of Bosworth, when his father was in the Tower and the Howard name disgraced, Thomas Howard lived in dread that it could happen again. His one goal in life was to secure Howard pre-eminence at Court. By turns he could be charming, ruthless,
bluff, obsequious, affable and cruel. The many conflicting accounts of him are testament to his mastery of dissimulation. He ‘is esteemed very resolute,’ one French ambassador noted, ‘and not easily moved to show by his face what his heart conceives.’
⁵⁵
As a father he could be protective and affectionate, but his children never quite knew if this concern was genuinely for them or for their status as Howard assets. When one of his servants later wrote to Henry: ‘I heard my Lord say that he had rather bury you and the rest of his children before he should give his consent to the ruin of this realm’,
⁵⁶
it was no empty threat. He was merely outlining the reality with which they had all learnt to live: that Thomas Howard was a politician first and a father second.

On 21 May 1524 Henry’s grandfather, the second Duke of Norfolk, died at the age of eighty. Popularly known as the Flodden Duke, his victory over the Scots, as well as his sheer longevity, accorded him legendary status. Henry had last seen his grandfather only a few months before, when he had stayed for two days at Tendring Hall,
⁵⁷
and it is likely that the Duke, a consummate storyteller, would have delighted his grandson with tales from his colourful past.

Four hundred and forty yards of black funerary cloth were needed to adorn the state chambers, the chapel, the Great Court and the gates of Framlingham Castle, the ducal seat in East Suffolk.
^fn11
For a month the Duke’s body lay in state in the chapel, surrounded by nineteen kneeling mourners. Every day three Masses were sung and every night twenty-eight servants kept vigil. On 22 June incense infused the summer air as the coffin was placed in a chariot and taken off on its two-day journey to Thetford Priory, the traditional burial place of the Dukes of Norfolk. Henry, dressed in a hooded black gown, rode behind his father at the head of a nine hundred-strong procession of heralds, churchmen, lords, knights, gentlemen, servants and torch bearers. Along the road they were accompanied by the ringing of bells and every church they passed was presented with escutcheons of the Howard arms and a purse of six shillings and eightpence.

Having arrived at Thetford after a night’s stopover at Diss, Henry and the rest of the mourners rose early and processed to the priory. The
Duke’s catafalque, fringed with a valance of black silk and Venice gold and surrounded by one hundred wax effigies, lay under the flicker of seven hundred candles. After three Masses, Henry sat transfixed in his pew as an elaborate spectacle unfolded. First the late Duke’s coat of arms was offered by the principal herald, Garter King of Arms, to the Bishop of Ely. The Bishop then delivered it to the Duke’s heir, Thomas Howard, symbolically investing him with his father’s honours. Thomas then returned the coat to Garter, who carried it to the altar. Next, Clarenceux King of Arms offered the late Duke’s shield to the Bishop, who in turn delivered it to Thomas, who then handed it back to Clarenceux, who took it to the altar. This process was repeated for the Duke’s sword and helmet, with a different herald officiating each time. Finally, Carlisle Herald went to the priory door and conducted a mounted knight, clad in the late Duke’s armour, down the aisle and up to the offering. The knight dismounted and delivered the Duke’s battleaxe, head down, to Carlisle who, having presented it to the Bishop, received it back in turn and took up his place alongside his fellow heralds at the altar. An hour-long sermon followed on the theme of Revelations, 5: ‘Behold the Lion of the Tribe of Judah Triumphs’. It reportedly whipped up ‘so violent a fear’ among the congregation that many ‘ran out with haste’. Next, the burial vault was consecrated and the Duke’s chief servants broke their staves of office and threw them in. Finally, slowly, the coffin of Henry’s grandfather was lowered into the vault.
^fn12

That evening a magnificent banquet was laid on for around two thousand diners. In all, the funeral had cost the staggering sum of £1,340. It had been a celebration of the life of the Flodden Duke and an appreciation of his role as a secular and spiritual leader of East Anglia. It was also a display of Howard power and regeneration. The yards and yards of black cloth that were draped throughout Framlingham Castle were decorated with the Howard arms. The horses that had drawn the chariot were similarly caparisoned and practically every square foot of Thetford Priory was covered in a patchwork of Howard symbolism.
⁵⁸
It conveyed a powerful message, but the role of the royal heralds in the obsequies conveyed an even stronger one: that the strength and continuity of the Howard dynasty was facilitated by, and ultimately depended upon, the authority of the King.

^fn1
The date of his birth is not known. Before the introduction of parish registers in 1538, births were recorded arbitrarily. We only know Thomas More’s birthday, for example, because his father scribbled it into his copy of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s
Historia Regum Britanniae
. The year of Henry’s birth is debatable, the only real clue being an inscription on a portrait of him, which reads: ‘
ANNO DNI
. 1546.
AETATIS SUE
29’. Despite much searching in the archives for a reference to his birth or christening, I have been unable to illuminate the matter, though I am unconvinced by W. A. Sessions’ argument for 1516 based on his belief that Henry seemed older than his two years in the household account of 1519 (Sessions, 1999, pp. 46–7). Henry’s age is impossible to ascertain from this source. For the sake of uniformity, I have adhered to the common assumption that the year was 1517.

^fn2
The present church is a nineteenth-century restoration. It was deconsecrated in 1972 and is now the site of the Museum of Garden History.

^fn3
Henry VIII may well have been his godfather, though there are no extant records to confirm this. Perhaps the presence of Thomas Wolsey, the King’s chief minister, at the Howard castle of Framlingham in the summer of 1517 points to his acting as the King’s proxy at the baptism. (‘The Framlingham Park Game Roll’, in J. Cummins,
The Hound and the Hawk: The Art of Medieval Hunting
, 2001, p. 264.) However, Wolsey had other reasons for being in the county at the time and may only have been paying his respects to its chief landowner.

^fn4
The connection between lactation and infertility was understood at the time. Furthermore, breastfeeding would have delayed the resumption of sexual relations as intercourse with a nursing woman was taboo (B. J. Harris, ‘Property, Power and Personal Relations: Elite Mothers and Sons in Yorkist and Early Tudor England’,
Signs
, 15/3, 1990, p. 613).

^fn5
The Tudor mansions of Tendring Hall and Hunsdon Hall have not survived. The latter, which Henry VIII transformed into a royal palace, can be glimpsed in the background of a portrait of Edward VI thought to have been painted in 1546. Kenninghall was demolished around 1650. Today only one part of one wing survives as a farmhouse.