The Last Days of Henry VIII: Conspiracy, Treason and Heresy at the Court of the Dying Tyrant (15 page)

The commission of regency signed on 7 July 1544 instructed that Prince Edward should be moved to Hampton Court for security and laid down that Katherine should use ‘the advice and counsel of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Chancellor Wriothesley, the Earl of Hertford, the Bishop of Westminster and Sir William Petre, secretary of state, in her
judgements’,
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a carefully balanced mix of conservative and radical members of the Council. A draft commission in the hand of Sir William Paget, newly appointed principal secretary to the king, dated 11 July, made arrangements for the financial running of the realm:

Commission to Queen Katherine and [blank] at the least
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of the councillors named in the commission of regency (which the king taking his voyage at the present time over the seas to invade the realm of France has made her) to address warrants to the king’s treasurers, receivers etc for the payment of money.
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Hard intelligence about what was going on within England was vital for its good governance, and Henry’s efficient civil servants instructed commissioners in every county to report regularly: ‘Once a month they shall certify to the Queen and council … upon the state of the county and their proceedings and all noteworthy occurrences.’
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One such report came from York, informing the queen that during the month-long assizes of oyer, terminer and gaol delivery
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at the castle there, seventeen persons had been convicted of murders and felonies, of which sixteen had been executed and one committed to the bishop’s prison. There was no mention of any acquittals.

Katherine revelled in her new-found power and demonstrated an extraordinary level of administrative competence as well as knowledge and expertise about military matters, particularly over issues in the dangerous Scottish border region.

Soon after Katherine assumed the regency, Francis Talbot – Earl of Shrewsbury and the king’s lieutenant in the North – and others wrote to her about the problem of Scottish prisoners held by the English
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who were not to be allowed to return home. Those able to pay for their upkeep were to be imprisoned ‘this side of the Tyne’ and the others consigned to gaols ‘as Hertford knows’. However,

It appears that with the Scottish prisoners being at least 100 and the prisoners already there, the gaols will be so pestered that they must die of hunger unless relieved at the king’s charge.

They begged her to decide with the Council whether to send the prisoners back to Scotland or to feed them at a cost to the exchequer,

for the gaols are so full that many die daily for lack of food and that number being so much increased, the penury and famine must needs be the greater.

Furthermore, the towns of Durham, Newcastle, Alnwick, Morpeth and Darneton were

infected with a very contagious disease of which two or three people die daily so that the writers may not lie here without danger.

Could they withdraw twenty or thirty miles south to Barnard’s Castle, for safety? The earl ended that they ‘did not think it convenient to remove without knowing her pleasure’.

Two days later, by command of the queen at Westminster, they were firmly instructed how to resolve the problem. Those prisoners ‘of the poorer sort’ who are ‘stout, busy or otherwise like to do any hurt being at liberty’ were to be sent to several prisons, and the others ‘if extreme necessity shall so require’ should be fed at the king’s charge. The remainder should be released upon a bond for good behaviour. The letter was signed ‘Kateryn the Queen Regent’.
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On 25 July, Katherine wrote from Hampton Court to Henry, who was directing the campaign against Boulogne, informing him that £40,000 was being sent to pay for the fighting and that the Council would be ‘diligent to advance to him, against the beginning of next month, as much money as possible’. Four thousand men were also being made ready to reinforce the English army ‘at one hour’s warning’, with arrangements in progress to transport them across the English Channel. She ends on a homely note: ‘The prince and the rest of the children are well.’
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Today, one can still sense the excitement Katherine felt about being at the heart of events in the surviving state papers and correspondence. On 31 July, she wrote again to the king to relate a report she had received that afternoon that the fishermen of Rye in Sussex had captured a
Scottish ship ‘wherein were certain Frenchmen and Scots sent with letters and credentials to the French king and others’. The plain-speaking queen thought the lucky seizure was ‘ordained of God to shame the crafty dealing and juggling of that [Scots] nation’.
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She enclosed the most important of the letters, which clearly indicates that she had read all the papers and had decided their significance.

On 6 August, she informed Henry of rumours that Frenchmen had landed in England, adding – with a flash of humour – that ‘fearing that some seditious person had spread the rumour (for a landing of French about Gloucester was unlikely)’, she had instructed the justices of the peace in the region to quieten the excitement in the country and to make diligent inquiries. She had received replies that showed ‘all was well’ and that the rumour was founded merely on the departure from Bristol of English warships.
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There were more serious issues to tackle, such as the problem of deserters from the English army. On 9 September, she issued a proclamation from Westminster ‘for the examination of persons returned from the king’s army in France and punishing of such as have insufficient passports to do so’.
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There was another proclamation relating to the plague then raging in ‘sundry parts of London and Westminster’. This banned from the court those infected or living in infected homes and prohibited members of the household from visiting such places ‘to avoid danger to the prince, Queen Katherine and the other children’.
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Katherine was also adept at praising those who served the king well. In early September, she wrote to the Lords Evers and Wharton, Wardens of the Scottish Eastern and Western Marches, for whose

diligent service … in the defence of the realm and the chastising of the king’s enemies, we give you hearty thanks and require you to give the like in our name to the captains and gentlemen that have served you.
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The queen also required them to continue their diligence ‘especially now in the time of harvest, so as their [the Scots] corn may be wasted as much as may be’.

This new war leader did not forget Henry’s requirement for a humble, loving wife at home. From Greenwich, soon after his departure for France, she wrote to tell him that although he had not been long away, she could not be satisfied until she had heard from him:

The want of your presence, so much beloved and desired by me, makes me that I cannot quietly enjoy anything until I hear from your Majesty.

She knew Henry’s absence was necessary, she continued,

yet love and affection compels me to desire your presence … Love makes me in all things to set apart my own commodity and pleasure and to embrace most joyfully his will and pleasure whom I love.

God, the knower of secrets, can judge these words not only to be written by ink, but most truly impressed in the heart … I make account with your Majesty as I do with God for His benefits and gifts heaped upon me daily …

And even such confidence I have in your Majesty’s gentleness, knowing myself never to have done my duty as were requisite and meet to such a noble Prince, at whose hands I have received so much love and goodness that with words I cannot express it.

Lest I should be too tedious unto your Majesty, I finish this, my scribbled letter, committing you into the governance of the Lord, with long life and prosperous felicity here, and after this life to enjoy the kingdom of His elect.

She dutifully signed the letter:

By your Majesty’s humble, obedient loving wife and servant. Kateryn the Queen. K.P.
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Meanwhile in France, after a brief armed reconnaissance mission by Suffolk, the English forces, short of soldiers, had partially invested Boulogne, twenty miles from Calais, whilst others, under Norfolk, besieged Montreuil. Bad weather in the Channel and in Flanders delayed deliveries of gunpowder, shot and other supplies – Norfolk complained
that his men had to drink water rather than beer – and Henry had to wait impatiently until early August before the full force of the English artillery could be brought to bear on the French defences at Boulogne. The chronicler Raphael Holinshed records the huge array of military earthworks thrown up by the besiegers:

Beside the trenches which were cast and brought around the town, there was a mount [artificial hill or earthwork] raised upon the east side and divers pieces of artillery planted aloft on the same. The which, together with the mortar pieces, sore annoyed them within [the town] and battered down the steeple of Our Lady’s church.
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For six weeks the deafening cannon roared, lobbing 100,000 gun stones into the town, and assaults were mounted on Boulogne’s outworks. The military operations were observed and directed by Henry, who was safely out of the range of French retaliatory fire on the north-east side of the town, near the sea and with easy access to fresh water. There was no shortage of that; no doubt he was also protected from the constant rains and high winds that afflicted operations that summer. In a postscript to a letter written to Queen Katherine on 8 September, Henry excitedly reported:

At the closing of these letters, the castle … with the dike [defensive ditch] is at our commandment and not like to be recovered by the Frenchmen. Castle and town are like to follow the same trade for this day we begin three batteries and have three mines
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going; besides one which has shaken and torn one of the greatest bulwarks. I am too busy to write more but send blessings to all my children and recommendations to my cousin Margaret
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and the rest of the ladies and gentlemen and to my Council.
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Three days later, the castle exploded spectacularly and those inside Boulogne knew the game was up. They sought the English terms for capitulation and negotiations for an honourable surrender began.

The chronicler Hall describes the king’s campaign against the town:

He so assaulted and so besieged with such abundance of great ordnance that never was there a more valiant assault made. Beside the undermining of the castle, tower and walls, the town was so beaten with the ordnance that there was not left one house whole therein …
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The English noted with delight that the beleaguered town was ‘in great necessity, for many eat horseflesh and some of the gentlemen Italians are glad to eat of a cat well larded and call it dainty meat’.
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Boulogne surrendered and Henry, who had been invigorated both in spirits and health during the siege, entered its gates in triumph on 18 September:

having the sword born [sic] before him by the lord marquis of Dorset, like a noble and valiant conqueror, he rode into Boulogne and the trumpeters standing on the walls of the town sounded their trumpets at the time of his entering to the great comfort of all the king’s true subjects.
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It was the crowning moment of a hitherto lacklustre military campaign.
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Ironically, that was the same day that Charles V, Henry’s ally, deserted him. The imperial emperor had attacked through Champagne and had advanced to within fifty miles of Paris before a logistical shortage of supplies forced his retreat. After secret negotiations with the French, a separate peace treaty was concluded at Crépy and announced on 18 September, surrendering Savoy and Milan to the Spanish, who in turn dropped their territorial claims on Burgundy. The Duke of Orléans was to marry Charles’ daughter. The Dauphin, heir to the French throne, now freed of an imperial threat to Paris, was able to concentrate a 36,000-strong army against the English and later in September he marched on Montreuil to relieve the garrison there, forlornly besieged by Norfolk and his starving troops. Henry, still supervising the extensive refortification of Boulogne, ordered Norfolk to withdraw and fall back to the main English force on the coast. Henry covertly left France on 30 September, and despite the desertion of his ally and the almost total failure of the allied war aims he returned in triumph to England. But in truth,
he knew he was likely to face French retribution wreaked on his own realm.

By November, looking about him, Bishop Gardiner was downcast by the progress of the war and by Henry’s government’s problems at home and abroad. On the 13th, he wrote to Secretary Paget from Bruges:

I am very much troubled with the state of our affairs … I cannot forebear to hold my pen still … as my mind is [so] encumbered with the matters to be busy in writing and devising.

I consider we be in war with France and Scotland. We have an enemy [in] the Bishop of Rome.

We have no friendship assured here.

We have received such displeasure of the Landgrave, chief captain of the Protestants, that he has cause to think we are angry with him.

Our war is noisome to the wealth of our own realm and it is so noisome to all merchants that must traffic by us and pass the narrow seas, as they cry out here wonderfully.

Herewith we see at home a great appearance of lack of such things as the continuance of the war requires.

When we put away this war, we show ourselves content to make a peace, we may have it, but so miserable, to speak the truth, as the French men offer, that thereby the king’s majesty’s noble courage should be so touched as we ought to fear the danger of his person after so long [a] travail in honour, in rule and government of the world, to sit still with such a peace as to render Boulogne and let the Scots alone only for a little money, not paid but promised.
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Gardiner’s gloom was fully justified. In early February 1545, Henry launched a pre-emptive strike on Scotland to keep the Scots firmly in their box. Sir William Evers, Warden of the Eastern Marches, led a raid into the border country, successfully burning the town of Melrose. His mission accomplished, he was ambushed on the way back at Ancrum Moor, near Jedburgh, and heavily defeated (Evers was killed in the fighting), providing the Scots with ample revenge for Solway Moss.