Young Henry: The Rise of Henry VIII (18 page)

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Authors: Robert Hutchinson

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With the ceremonial based firmly on precedent – the form used was a variation of the coronation ritual used for Henry VII almost a quarter of a century before – some things were bound to go awry. Edward Grey, Baron Grey of Powys, was assigned the honour of leading the horses of the queen’s litter, a role fulfilled by his ancestors. But Edward was aged just six. Viscounts were also detailed to carry the sceptre and ivory rod in the queen’s procession, but in 1509, there were no viscounts alive in England.
98
On the Tuesday following, there was a celebratory joust at Westminster with Sir Edward Howard leading the challengers in the contest and Sir John Pechy (or Peche) heading the list of defenders. An anonymous London chronicler, who was present, described the start of the extravagant spectacle:
Two of the chief … challengers, enclosed in a mountain goodly and curiously garnished by a lion made of glittering gold, were conveyed out of Westminster Hall into the palace and so laid about the tilt [yard] till they came afore the king and queen standing and there the mountain opened and the two chief challengers rode forth, clean armed unto the tilt’s end …
The defenders’ entrance was also stunning:
Sir John Pechy … came in enclosed in a castle drawn with a lioness garnished with silver and upon the fore part of this castle was set a pomegranate [Katherine’s personal badge] tree well and curiously wrought and so cunningly put it was to the people apparent as they had been very pomegranates that was hanged upon that tree.
Upon the top of this castle stood a fane [banner] with the arms of St George there painted.
The castle was drawn about the tilt and when it came against the king’s tent, it was opened … and out rode the said defender and made his obeisance to the king and queen.
On the second day there was a ‘tourney’, when the combatants fought on foot with swords, wielding a set number of blows. ‘It was fearful to behold,’ gasped the chronicler
[and] continued with such eagerness that their number of strokes passed and the power of the marshals [was not] sufficient to part them till the king cried to his guard to help … which was not done without great pain.
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All this was very jolly, but the celebrations and feasting had to stop some time. The sudden death of Henry’s grandmother five days after the coronation put paid to the last vestiges of revelry. Lady Margaret had fallen ill at the beginning of the year. Her condition was serious enough for estimates of the cost of her funeral to be drawn up, and after recovering, she delegated some of her everyday affairs to Bishop Fisher and two others, all named executors.
After the coronation, she stayed at Cheyneygates, a lodging of the Abbot of Westminster within the monastery precincts,
100
where she suddenly became sick. Henry Parker, Baron Morley, who had served as her cup-bearer, suggested that consuming a roast cygnet was the cause of her malady.
101
Medicines certainly did not improve her condition and she died on 29 June.
102
Bishop Fisher reported that when the last rites were administered ‘with all her heart and soul she raised her body … and confessed assuredly that in that sacrament was contained Christ
Jesu, the Son of God that died for wretched sinners … in whom wholly she put her trust and confidence’. Parker observed that she died at the very moment that the Host was raised in reverence.
103
Cardinal Reginald Pole, in later years Henry VIII’s bête noire, claimed that Lady Margaret, ‘with tears’, entreated the young king on her deathbed to obey Bishop Fisher above all others, as she feared he would turn away from God’s laws and Christian teaching.
104
Lady Margaret was buried in Westminster Abbey on 9 July. Again Bishop Fisher, her chaplain, was chosen to deliver her funeral sermon. She was, he said,
of marvellous gentleness unto all folk but especially to her own whom she trusted and loved right tenderly.
Unkind she would not be to any creature, nor forgetful of any kindness or service done to her, which is no little part of nobleness.
She was not vengeful, nor cruel, but ready anon to forget and to forgive injuries done to her …
All England for her death has cause for weeping. The poor creatures who were wont to receive her alms to whom she was always piteous and merciful. The students of both the universities to whom she was as a mother … All good priests and clerks to whom she was a true defender.
105
Henry celebrated his eighteenth birthday on 28 June. The death of his grandmother had snapped the last link with the overpowering constraints of his youth.
A GOLDEN WORLD
 
 
‘If you could see how nobly, how wisely the prince behaves, I am sure you will hasten to England. All England is in ecstasies. Extortion is put down – liberality is the order of the day.’
William Blount, Lord Mountjoy, to Erasmus, 27 May 1509.
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Married life enthralled Henry VIII – at least at this early stage in his reign. In the halcyon weeks that followed his crowning, he wrote enthusiastic letters to his father-in-law Ferdinand describing his joyful and enchanted life with Katherine. On 17 July 1509 he described their coronation: ‘The multitude of the people who assisted was immense and their joy and applause most enthusiastic.’
These were happy, carefree salad days, spent in quest of boundless regal pleasure – whilst the king’s ministers ran the country, as they had done for his father. Henry amused himself with ‘jousts, birding [hawking], hunting and other innocent and honest pastimes, also in visiting different parts of my kingdom’. Lest Ferdinand should think him simply a frivolous young monarch, he hastened to add: ‘I do not, on that account, neglect affairs of state.’
2
A profound love for Katherine had blossomed unexpectedly in his teenage heart. Nine days later, Henry wrote again promising that the enduring bond between him and his bride was ‘now so strict that all their interests are common. The love I bear Katherine is such that if I were
free
[the word is significant], I would choose her in preference to all others.’
3
He had conveniently forgotten Eleanor of Austria, his father’s
preferred imperial candidate for his wife, whom the king had now jilted following two years of marriage negotiations.
Henry was intent on pleasing his bride and devised elaborate entertainments to amuse her as well as purchasing presents, such as the ‘eight fine pillows’ delivered to ‘our most dear wife’ by the department of the Great Wardrobe in November.
4
The previous month, thirty shillings were paid for ‘the queen’s lavender’.
That fickle bowman Cupid was plainly active at the English court, for on 30 July Henry announced to Ferdinand that his long-time friend and mentor William Blount, Lord Mountjoy, ‘whom I hold in high esteem, has married Inez de Venegas, one of the ladies of the queen. I think it very desirable that Spanish and English families should be united by [such] ties.’
5
Katherine told her father that the chief cause of her love for her husband was that ‘he is so true a son’ to him. Henry had therefore ‘put himself entirely in your hands’. Their kingdom was ‘in great peace and entertains much love to the king, my lord and me’ she added, and ‘our time passes in continual festivities’. In a postscript, she begged Ferdinand to buy a special gift for her husband: ‘my lord requests a jennet, a Neapolitan and a Sicilian horse’ from Ferdinand ‘by the first messenger’.
6
In September, the Spanish king wrote of his enormous pleasure that Katherine ‘and the king are well and prosperous and that they love one another so much’. He hoped fervently that their happiness would last ‘as long as they live’ and observed:
To be well married is the greatest blessing in the world. A good marriage is not only an excellent thing in itself but also the source of all other kinds of happiness.
God shows favour to good husbands and wives.
Her father had summoned home the unfortunate Fuensalida and had appointed Luis Caroz his successor in London. During the interregnum before the new envoy’s arrival, Ferdinand instructed Henry that ‘all my communications respecting the affairs pending between England and Spain will be made to the queen, your wife’, who would act as his ambassador. He begged his son-in-law to ‘give her implicit credit’ or
diplomatic credentials. Up to March 1510, when Caroz finally arrived in England, she frequently reported on developments at court in coded letters to Spain. If his wife’s personal conflict of interests bothered the infatuated, lovesick Henry, he did not object.
7
Indeed, he happily accepted paternal advice from Ferdinand about the problems of kingship and the perils of the perfidious French – all delivered via his wife. Katherine was requested to point out to Henry that
… secrecy and circumspection are always necessary in great enterprises.
The King of England must therefore henceforth write in his letters nothing but such things as the French may read without danger.
All other communications must be made by her and be written in her cipher or in the cipher of the [Spanish] ambassador.
I have always observed and will, in future, always observe the same rule – namely, to write in common writing only what the French may see and to write all that is important in cipher.
8
All this Henry took meekly like a lamb, even swearing eternal obedience to his fifty-seven-year-old father-in-law. He preferred an alliance with Spain over one with any other nation and would ‘reject them all in order to preserve your friendship’, he submissively told the Spanish king. Furthermore, he promised ‘like a dutiful son, to obey all your behests, as I would obey the behests of my late father, if he were still alive’.
9
Immediately on becoming queen, Katherine’s household was increased to an establishment of one hundred and sixty courtiers and servants, governed by a Lord Chamberlain, the eighty-three-year-old Thomas Butler, Seventh Earl of Ormond, a grizzled veteran of the previous century’s Wars of the Roses Battle of Tewkesbury. With seventy-two manors in England and further extensive land holdings in Ireland, he was one of the richest men in the realm.
Only eight of her retainers were still Spanish and these included one of her ladies, Maria de Salinas, ‘whom the queen loved more than any other mortal’.
10
Her haughty and canny confessor, the Franciscan Friar Diego Fernández, played a dominant role in Katherine’s daily spiritual and temporal life. Caroz, who occasionally felt the full force of Henry’s
exasperation, blamed the confessor for his low standing at court, claiming that the friar exerted ‘undue influence’ on the queen.
Amongst her Gentlewomen of the Bedchamber was Lady Elizabeth Boleyn, whose two daughters, Mary and Anne, were to have a calamitous impact on Katherine’s health and happiness in the years ahead.
The queen afterwards became a patron of Juan Luis Vives,
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a Spanish disciple of the humanist scholar Erasmus whom she brought to England as a doctor of laws at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Years later, they talked earnestly about the capriciousness of destiny as they were rowed down the River Thames from the Bridgettine monastery at Syon in Middlesex back to Richmond Palace. The queen said she sought an uneventful, tranquil life but if she had to choose between adversity and prosperity, Katherine would always plump for the former as ‘if the unfortunate lacked consolation, real loss of spiritual integrity usually visited the prosperous’. This creed was to comfort her during her later years of marriage.
Like his father, Henry was no slouch in his efforts to extend and thus protect the Tudor dynasty. By late autumn 1509, Katherine happily found herself pregnant, with Henry reporting to his father-in-law that ‘the child in her womb is alive’ and that he and his kingdom rejoiced at the news.
12
Ferdinand told his daughter in November of his joy at her impending motherhood:
Your pregnancy is a great blessing since you and your husband and the English people have wished it so much. May God give you a good delivery. I will continually pray to the Almighty to grant my prayers until I am informed you have given birth to your child.
The Spanish king begged Katherine ‘to be careful of her health’ and firmly advised her to avoid all exertion and ‘especially not write with your own hand. With the first child, it is requisite for women to take more care of themselves than is necessary in subsequent pregnancies.’
13
For Henry, it was not all laddish pursuits in the tiltyard or the hunting field. He maintained a powerful intellectual curiosity derived from his classical education and it became his (sometimes irksome) habit to invite his friend Thomas More into his Privy Chamber
and there some time in matters of astronomy, geometry, divinity and such other faculties and some time in his worldly affairs, to sit up and confer with him.
And other whiles would he in the night have him up into the leads [the palace roof], there to consider with him the diversities, courses, motions and operations of the stars and planets.
14
During a conversation with Mountjoy that May, Henry admitted that he yearned to become more learned and wise. His old tutor said this was not really expected of monarchs, but instead, the king should foster the growth of knowledge by becoming a generous patron to philosophers. Henry exclaimed: ‘Why, of course, for without them, life would hardly be life!’ Mountjoy cheerfully recounted this conversation to Erasmus, who was still teaching in Rome, and urged him to come to England as soon as possible, even offering him £5 towards the expenses of the arduous journey across Europe. ‘Avarice,’ Mountjoy rhapsodised, ‘has fled the country. Our king is not after gold, or gems, or precious metals, but virtue, glory [and] immortality.’
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It was an attractive, compelling prospect. The Dutch humanist duly came to England in high hopes of enjoying royal patronage – but despite his earlier affable correspondence with Henry the prince, he received no munificence from Henry the king. Instead, Erasmus stayed at the home of his close friend Thomas More amid the herbalist shops in Bucklersbury, off Cheapside in the City of London, and there suffered a sharp attack of lumbago. Eventually he was granted a professorial post at Cambridge by Bishop Fisher in August 1511 and a modest church benefice arranged by Warham at Aldington, south-east of Ashford, in Kent.
George Cavendish, later Gentleman Usher to Wolsey, recalled that the new king was seen as a ‘natural, young, lusty and courageous prince [who was] entering into the flower of pleasant youth’. With his accession, England had entered ‘a golden world’.
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More was impressed by the young Henry’s extraordinary charisma and gracious presence. He reported to Fisher:
The king has a way of making every man feel that he is enjoying his
special favour, just as the London wives pray before the image of Our Lady by the Tower, until each of them believes it is smiling upon her.
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With these personable talents, Henry VIII would have made a credible and successful politician.
More presented a
Coronation Suite
of five Latin poems to the king and queen, describing his sovereign as the ‘glory of the age’, with his succession inaugurating ‘a new golden era’. Virtue and learning were to reign supreme; liberality was to expel avarice; darkness would give way to light. As for Katherine, he predicted that ‘she will be the mother of kings as great as her ancestors’.
18
John Skelton, Henry’s old Latin schoolmaster, also penned effusive verses in honour of the occasion, predicting that the king would be just and wise and protect England’s common people.
19
Touchingly, Henry did not overlook those who were important to him in his formative years. Anne Oxenbridge, ‘late the king’s nurse’ who, after the death of her first husband, had married Walter Luke by 1504, was granted an annuity of £20 a year on 9 July.
20
The fifty shillings paid to a ‘Mistress Oxenbridge’ in September 1510 may be a slip of the clerk’s pen and probably refers to the same lady. Spending money for her, perhaps?
21
In December 1519 there is also a payment of 6s 8d ‘to the king’s nurse for cheese’.
Elizabeth Denton, the former ‘lady mistress’ of the royal nursery at Eltham Palace, was also provided with a liberal annual pension of £50 for life. She was granted the Keepership of Coldharbour (Lady Margaret’s London home), and a tun
22
of Gascon wine each year, delivered from the port of London by Sir Robert Southwell, Chief Butler of England.
23
Giles D’Ewes, Henry’s French teacher, who also taught him to play the lute, was appointed that September as librarian at Richmond Palace on an annual salary of £10, payable from income from the customs of the port of Bristol.
24
The loyal servants of the king’s grandmother were also not forgotten by this grateful and considerate sovereign. The month after her death, eight were granted sinecure posts ‘for services to the king’s granddame’, including her sergeant-at-arms, William Pool, who had moved across
to Katherine’s household to serve in the same capacity. He was made Bailiff of the town and Lordship of Holesworthy, North Devon.
25
His father’s faithful retainers were also rewarded: William Adbaston was granted a mill called ‘Pole Milne, alias Shipton Milne in the manor of Langley, Oxfordshire’, at an annual rent of fifteen shillings in thanks for his ‘services to Henry VII and for his relief and succour in his old age’.
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William Berryman, ‘late yeoman for Henry VII’s mouth [a food taster] in his kitchen’, was given leases of a tavern called
le Rose super le Hope
and a brewery in the London parish of All Hallows, Staining, in return for his payment of the almost lyrical peppercorn rent of ‘a red rose at Midsummer’.
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