Tudor (61 page)

APPENDIX 1

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BODY OF JAMES IV?

A
CCORDING TO A PROSE AND VERSE TRACT OF 1575
, J
AMES
IV'
S BODY
was brought through the streets of London after the Battle of Flodden slung over a horse, just as Richard III's had been brought to Leicester after Bosworth.
¹
Katherine of Aragon received it at the Carthusian monastery at Sheen, but it could not be buried until the Pope granted his permission to lay the excommunicant in sacred ground. Henry duly asked the Pope, stating his intention to bury the king eventually at St Paul's, and it is often assumed that is where he was buried. In fact, although Pope Leo gave Henry his permission, the body was left at Sheen, unburied.
²

The Elizabethan antiquarian Stow later saw James' body, where it lay cast ‘into an old waste room, amongst old timber, stone, lead, and other rubble', as it had since the monastery at Sheen was dissolved. After that, some Elizabethan workmen cut off James' head ‘for their foolish pleasure'. It still had James' red hair and beard. Another Londoner later rescued it, keeping it for a while in his house, saying it smelled nice, until eventually he paid for it to be buried at St Michael's Church, Wood Street, in the City of London.
³
The church burned down in the Great Fire of London. There is a pub on the site today.

James' English wife did not fare much better. The remains of
Margaret Tudor disappeared after her tomb was destroyed by a Protestant mob in May 1559. They had attacked the Carthusian priory in Perth where she was buried, killing one of the monks before desecrating her remains.

APPENDIX 2

THE MYSTERIOUS QUARREL BETWEEN HENRY VIII AND MARGARET DOUGLAS

H
ITHERTO HISTORIANS HAVE CLAIMED THAT
H
ENRY VIII'S DECISION
to exclude Margaret Douglas from the succession in his will followed a quarrel she had with him in the autumn of 1546, and have suggested it was over religion.
¹
This is false.

We know Margaret was at court at least until August 1546 when she was buying powder from the king's apothecary. Historians suggest the argument with Henry took place at around this time, or later. They base this on a memorandum written in 1562 by her husband's former secretary, Thomas Bishop.
²
At this time (during the reign of Queen Elizabeth) he had been digging for dirt on Margaret and her husband Lennox, who had been scheming to marry their son Darnley to Mary, Queen of Scots. They in turn tried to discredit Bishop. According to the Lennox account, ‘after the death of King James [V] in Scotland the said Bishop returned into his country [i.e. Scotland] and was retained in service by the Earl of Lennox, and, for the faithful service which King Henry VIII supposed he had done to the said earl, he gave him the living which he now has, which thing the king did afterwards repent, understanding that he [Bishop] went about to set dissension between the said earl and his lady'.
³
The Lennoxes complained that Bishop was a frequent troublemaker, not only coming between married couples, but also
in setting the Lennoxes' servants against each other, and that he was a coward and a thief to boot.

In the Bishop memorandum quoted by historians, Bishop defends himself by surveying all the work he has done for Elizabeth I's predecessors, despite the difficulties Margaret has put in his way and how he has been rewarded for it. In 1546, ‘His majesty [Henry VIII], not repenting his former gifts of lands, pension and money, a little afore his death and after the breach with my lady Lennox, gave to me and my heirs . . .', etc. This refers to land grants Bishop received from Henry that October and dates Margaret's supposed argument with Henry to shortly before that time. He does not say what her argument with Henry was about, but he complains about her continued anger towards him ever since. He worked for Edward VI's councillors, Somerset and Northumberland, and then ‘Queen Mary, though my lady Lennox told her I was a heretic, her majesty gave me, unknown to her . . . my pension anew'. He even claims that Queen Mary trusted him over her Catholic cousin and old friend. The memorandum concludes: ‘I trust . . . the queen's majesty will be as good sovereign to me as her gracious father my master [Henry VIII] was in the like and as her highness predecessors, my masters, have been, whom without fear of my lady Lennox or any others truly and without malice I shall serve . . .', etc.
⁴

It has been assumed that religion was at the cause of Margaret's supposed argument with Henry. But another previously overlooked manuscript remains extant in which Bishop clarifies the matter. His claim is that Henry VIII was so angry about false accusations the Lennoxes had made against him in the 1540s that ‘[Margaret] ever after lost a part of [the king's] heart, as appeared at his death'.
⁵
In other words, Henry VIII demoted Margaret in line of succession because she was rude about Thomas Bishop! Now, Henry VIII evidently did value Bishop's services, but Henry's efforts to describe Margaret as illegitimate in 1536 suggest that he had wished to demote her in line of succession long before Bishop came to England. Despite Bishop's
memorandum in February 1562, the imprisonment of the Earl of Lennox in March and Margaret Douglas in April, the many accusations made against them, and specific efforts made to dismiss Lennox's claims of the positive achievements of his work for Henry VIII, it was nowhere else suggested in 1562 (or by anyone who had been alive in 1546, other then Bishop) that Margaret had ever quarrelled with Henry.

Bishop's subsequent career proved him a rather less reliable Tudor servant than he had claimed. In 1569 he was found to be in contact with adherents of the captive Mary, Queen of Scots. He ended up in the Tower where he remained until 1576, and was granted permission to return to Scotland by James VI after Mary's execution.
⁶
Margaret died in 1578, when she still owned a treasured tablet picture of the king. In her will it was bequeathed to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.
⁷
This may be the tablet book with a picture of Henry VIII that survives in the British Library. A gold enamelled Tudor girdle prayer book with open leaf tracery covers dating from around 1540, the tiny book still contains its original manuscript with an illuminated miniature bust of Henry VIII.
⁸
It came to the British Library from a library that belonged to the heirs of William Seymour, Duke of Somerset, the widower of Margaret's granddaughter Arbella Stuart. Arbella had as a child been betrothed to Robert Dudley's short-lived legitimate son, and it could have passed to her then, if it had not always stayed in her care.

APPENDIX 3

GUILDFORD AND JANE DUDLEY

G
UILDFORD
D
UDLEY'S PLACE IN THE MYTHS CONCERNING HIS WIFE
Lady Jane Grey is a dark one. In some of the stories Guildford emerges as little better than a whining, spoilt, rapist. To clear his name it is worth recording the few facts we have concerning Guildford's relationship with his young wife, drawn from sources predating 19 July 1553.

The couple had an arranged marriage, as was the norm for children of the nobility, and at the usual age. There is no source written before Jane's overthrow to support the oft-repeated Italian story that Jane resisted the marriage.

It was expected that Guildford would be granted the title of king, most likely in the September parliament. The two subsequent consorts of reigning English queens were both given the title and Edward VI had already described Guildford as ‘born to achieve celebrity' and a man from whom his subjects could expect ‘great things'.
¹
It seems doubtful Jane would have objected to this, later stories notwithstanding. Her European mentor and correspondent Heinrich Bullinger expressed the view that by the laws of nature and God a woman should not rule. Guildford was referred to sometimes as king while Jane was queen, but again there are no sources written before Jane's overthrow that suggest she was under any pressure to pre-empt Parliament's decision on the title. In the procession on the day Jane was proclaimed queen, Guildford was no more than her consort. His name was not mentioned
in the proclamation that declared Jane the queen, and his signature does not appear alongside hers in the official documents she signed ‘Jane the queen'.

Venetian reports, later written up by three different Italians, include what may be a garbled account of a petition Jane made in the Tower in the expectation of a pardon after 19 July.
²
These cast the blame for the attempt to keep Mary I from the throne in July 1553 on John Dudley's supposed ambition to make his son king. In these reports ‘Jane' describes bitter arguments with Guildford and his mother over his expectation that he will be king. Despite this supposed ill feeling, the Italians also later relayed a story describing how Guildford asked to see Jane on the final night of their lives, and embrace her one last time. She was said to have rebuffed him, saying it would be too distressing for them both, and that it was better to prepare for what was to come with prayer. It paints a very Italian picture of a passionate young man thinking of fleshly matters, while the pious Jane focuses on God.

It is impossible to know what stories, from these reports, originated with Jane and what did not, but it is worth comparing what we know with what we are told. We know that on the last day of her reign Jane named her godson, Guildford. This suggests she respected him, at the very least. Such positive feelings are confirmed in later comments concerning Guildford, which are written and signed in her own hand, and therefore carry more weight that any reported speech. They describe him as a co-martyr. It is also notable that her last letters are signed using her married name, Lady Jane Dudley.
³

English contemporaries described Guildford as a ‘comely, virtuous and goodly gentleman' who ‘most innocently was executed'.
⁴
On balance the evidence suggests his wife shared these views of him.

APPENDIX 4

THE MYTH OF FRANCES BRANDON THE CHILD ABUSER

I
BELIEVED
I
HAD SUCCESSFULLY DEMOLISHED THE VARIOUS MYTHS
concerning Frances in my triple biography of her daughters Jane, Katherine and Mary Grey, but one piece of ‘evidence' is still used to support the old tropes.

The accusations of child abuse against Frances are built on a story, related about Jane almost a decade after she died, in a book called
The Schoolmaster
, written by Elizabeth Tudor's one-time tutor, Roger Ascham. It describes the thirteen-year-old Jane reading the
Phaedo
of Plato in Greek at her family home at Bradgate in Leicestershire while the rest of the household are out hunting. Interrupted briefly from her quiet study, Jane explains that she loves learning because her lessons with her kindly tutor are a respite from the abuse of her parents, who pinch and nip at her if she doesn't perform every task perfectly. ‘One of the greatest benefits that God ever gave me, is that He sent me so sharp, severe parents and so gentle a schoolmaster', Ascham recalls her saying. Frances' modern-day detractors refer to these as ‘Jane's own words'. They are, of course, no such things. They are reported speech, written by Roger Ascham.

As I described in
The Sisters Who Would be Queen
, while Roger Ascham really did meet Jane, when he wrote to her referring to their meeting a few months later he commented only on her parents' pride in her work.

Her ‘gentle' tutor, John Aylmer, was meanwhile writing letters to a Swiss theologian complaining that the teenager ‘was at that age [when] . . . all people are inclined to follow their own ways', and asked how best to ‘provide bridles for restive horses' such as this spirited girl.

So why did Ascham tell this story? His book,
The Schoolmaster
, was intended to promote a kindlier method of teaching than the beatings commonly delivered to recalcitrant pupils. But it is also notable that Ascham began writing
The Schoolmaster
in 1563, the year Katherine Grey had her second son, and while the MP John Hales was writing his book supporting Katherine's claim as Elizabeth's heir. It was obviously helpful that the passage about Jane chimed with elegies and ballads that were being published and republished that year, also praising her virtues and blaming her execution for treason either on the ambition of her father and father-in-law, or on Mary I's cruelty. Ascham recalled that it was William Cecil, that great protector of Katherine Grey's claim, who suggested, that summer, that he write his book.

The Schoolmaster
was published (posthumously) in 1570, during the aftermath of the 1569 Catholic rising in favour of the rival claims to the throne of Mary, Queen of Scots. That same year a fraudulent letter appeared in a new edition of Foxe's
Martyrs
, from ‘Jane' to her father, blaming her death on his actions. A final point to make about the Ascham story is that, in common with an Italian story describing Jane being bullied by her parents into marrying Guildford (for more on which see the Appendix on Guildford), Frances is only ever mentioned in conjunction with her husband, not as the dominating figure she has become in modern literature, in which she has been used very much as Mary I has been used with Elizabeth I, that is as the shadow that throws the heroine into a more brilliant light.