Young Henry: The Rise of Henry VIII (30 page)
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Authors: Robert Hutchinson
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What this mysterious ‘news’ constituted is unfortunately unknown to us – but there were rumours of a plot to assassinate Wolsey in 1518 and Buckingham may have been considered a ringleader. Above all, there were his aspirations for the crown. When the duke sought Henry’s permission to visit his own properties in the Welsh Marches in late 1520, his application was peremptorily refused, because of fears that he would raise a rebellion from among his tenantry and retainers.
The duke was deeply patriotic with an irrational, jingoistic hatred of the French; he greatly resented his personal expense in attending the Field of the Cloth of Gold. He was also fervently religious, founding a college in August 1514 at Thornbury, south Gloucestershire, where from 1511 he began building an impressive fortified house
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set within a park of a thousand acres (404.69 hectares) for his deer.
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set within a park of a thousand acres (404.69 hectares) for his deer.
In 1520, Buckingham told his Chancellor Robert Gilbert that he had been such a great sinner he was sure he lacked grace. While he may have hoped for forgiveness from his Maker, he was to receive no mercy from Henry.
While contemporary chroniclers believed Wolsey conducted a vindictive campaign against the duke
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there is little documentary evidence for this. But the king now took a high level of interest in the duke’s activities, so much so that in November 1520, Buckingham was worried that a member of his own household was ‘misreporting’ him to Henry.
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there is little documentary evidence for this. But the king now took a high level of interest in the duke’s activities, so much so that in November 1520, Buckingham was worried that a member of his own household was ‘misreporting’ him to Henry.
This campaign of covert surveillance and assiduous collection of information about the duke at last bore its bitter, poisonous fruit.
On 8 April 1521, Henry summoned the duke, who was at Thornbury, to come without delay to Greenwich Palace. Buckingham, with his customary ducal largess, generously rewarded the royal messenger with a mark (13s 4d) and obediently departed for London. He was blissfully unaware that his small entourage was being followed at a distance by a group of Henry’s courtiers and sergeants-at-arms, under the command of one of the king’s praetorians, Sir William Compton.
Buckingham paused only to visit devoutly the Shrine of Our Lady of Eyton, near Reading, and then lodged in a hostelry at Windsor for the night. While in the building, he identified one of those shadowing his progress as Thomas Ward, a gentleman harbinger at Henry’s court. Habitually forthright and direct, the duke demanded to know why he was there – but Ward would only answer that he was engaged on the king’s business. Buckingham guessed his true mission in one heart-stopping moment of acuity, followed instantly by the awful logic that his life was now forfeit. Ashen-faced, he ‘perceived that he could not escape. Much was he in spirit troubled that as he was at his breakfast his meat would not down.’ Anyone would suffer a loss of appetite confronted with the sure knowledge that their journey would end in the Tower of London and that their chances of survival were minimal.
The duke, however, was made of stern stuff. He presented a brave face and rode on to Tothill Fields,
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alongside Westminster, where he boarded his barge on 16 April for the last stage of his planned journey to Greenwich Palace. Minutes later he passed Wolsey’s palace, York Place, and ordered his boatmen to put him ashore there, intending to confront the cardinal face to face in perhaps his last opportunity to tell him what he really thought of him. However, he was politely informed the minister was ‘diseased’ and could not see him. Buckingham must have felt the black clouds of Nemesis gathering around him, but he still left Wolsey’s cooks a twenty-shilling tip.
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alongside Westminster, where he boarded his barge on 16 April for the last stage of his planned journey to Greenwich Palace. Minutes later he passed Wolsey’s palace, York Place, and ordered his boatmen to put him ashore there, intending to confront the cardinal face to face in perhaps his last opportunity to tell him what he really thought of him. However, he was politely informed the minister was ‘diseased’ and could not see him. Buckingham must have felt the black clouds of Nemesis gathering around him, but he still left Wolsey’s cooks a twenty-shilling tip.
Well, said the duke, yet will I drink of my lord’s wine [before] I pass. Then a gentleman of my lord’s [Wolsey] brought the duke with much reverence into the cellar, where the duke drank.
When he saw and perceived no cheer to him was made, he changed colour and so departed to his barge, saying to his servants, I marvel where my chancellor is, that he comes not to me.
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Naïve Buckingham! Gilbert, his chancellor, was already locked up in the Tower.
As the duke was rowed in stately fashion downriver towards London Bridge, his barge was intercepted by another boat, packed with one hundred of the king’s Yeomen of the Guard. Their captain, Sir Henry
Marney, leapt aboard and arrested the duke in the king’s name. Prisoner and escort landed at nearby Hay Wharf and marched the short distance along Thames Street to the gates of the Tower. As well as Gilbert, the duke’s confessor John Delacourt and a Carthusian monk called Nicholas Hopkins were already in custody. His attendants on the barge were ordered to go to the duke’s London home, the Manor of the Rose in the parish of St Lawrence Poultney.
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Marney, leapt aboard and arrested the duke in the king’s name. Prisoner and escort landed at nearby Hay Wharf and marched the short distance along Thames Street to the gates of the Tower. As well as Gilbert, the duke’s confessor John Delacourt and a Carthusian monk called Nicholas Hopkins were already in custody. His attendants on the barge were ordered to go to the duke’s London home, the Manor of the Rose in the parish of St Lawrence Poultney.
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The same day the king’s secretary Richard Pace wrote to Wolsey to postpone a planned visit by Thomas Ruthal, Bishop of Durham, as ‘the king would not suffer him so to do, but commanded him to tarry here [at Greenwich] for the examination of certain things of Buckingham’s servants’. Ruthal had sent on a letter, written on Henry’s orders, to those looking after Buckingham’s house.
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(The letter has not survived, but knowing the king’s habits on such occasions, it probably contained orders for them to inventory and value the duke’s possessions.)
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(The letter has not survived, but knowing the king’s habits on such occasions, it probably contained orders for them to inventory and value the duke’s possessions.)
The charges were quickly drawn up and his trial by seventeen peers, presided over by his old friend Thomas Howard, Second Duke of Norfolk, began at eight o’clock on the morning of Monday 13 May at Westminster.
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The executioner’s axe – the blade turned away – was carried before Buckingham as he was brought into court to stand at the bar, between Sir Thomas Lovell, Constable of the Tower, and Sir Richard Cholmeley, its deputy lieutenant. The clerk of the court opened proceedings:
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The executioner’s axe – the blade turned away – was carried before Buckingham as he was brought into court to stand at the bar, between Sir Thomas Lovell, Constable of the Tower, and Sir Richard Cholmeley, its deputy lieutenant. The clerk of the court opened proceedings:
Sir Edward, Duke of Buckingham, hold up your hand.
You are indicted of high treason in that you traitorously have conspired and imagined as far as in thee lay, to shorten the life of our sovereign lord the king.
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Of this treason how will you acquit yourself?
Buckingham answered formally: ‘By my peers.’
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Then the charges against him were read, and the duke snapped: ‘It is false and untrue and [was] conspired and forged to bring me to my death and that I will prove.’
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Then the charges against him were read, and the duke snapped: ‘It is false and untrue and [was] conspired and forged to bring me to my death and that I will prove.’
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Wolsey had lined up Gilbert, Delacourt and Charles Knyvet (a distant relation whom Buckingham had earlier sacked as his surveyor)
as witnesses against their master over the next three days. There was much talk of Nicholas Hopkins, a monk from the Carthusian priory at Hinton, Somerset, who was notorious for his cryptic prophecies which held the duke spellbound. The monk several times predicted that Buckingham ‘would have all and that he should endeavour to obtain the love of the community’; that ‘the king would have no male issue of his body’; and that ‘if anything but good should happen to the king … the duke was next in succession to the crown of England’.
as witnesses against their master over the next three days. There was much talk of Nicholas Hopkins, a monk from the Carthusian priory at Hinton, Somerset, who was notorious for his cryptic prophecies which held the duke spellbound. The monk several times predicted that Buckingham ‘would have all and that he should endeavour to obtain the love of the community’; that ‘the king would have no male issue of his body’; and that ‘if anything but good should happen to the king … the duke was next in succession to the crown of England’.
Buckingham had given generously to the Carthusians and warned his chaplain to keep these predictions secret under seal of confession, saying prophetically ‘that if the king knew of it, I will be altogether destroyed’.
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Knyvet testified that the duke planned
what his father intended to do to Richard III at Salisbury when he made suit to come to the king’s presence, having upon him secretly a knife, so that when kneeling before the king he would have risen suddenly and stabbed him.
In saying this, the duke put his hand treasonably upon his dagger and said that if he were so ill-treated he would do his best to execute his purpose.
This he swore by the blood of our Lord.
There was more damning testimony. Knyvet heard of Hopkins’ predictions and warned that the monk might be deluded by the devil ‘and [that] it was evil to meddle with such things’:
The duke said it could not do him harm and feloniously rejoiced in the words of the monk, adding that if it had happened well with the king when he was last sick, the duke would have cut off the heads of my lord cardinal, Sir Thomas Lovell and others, also that he would rather die than be ordered as he was.
Later Buckingham was walking in the gallery of his house at Bletchingly, Surrey, with his son-in-law Sir George Neville, Lord Abergavenny. He declared that if the king should die, he ‘meant to have the rule in England, whoever would say the contrary’. If Abergavenny had opposed this, Buckingham ‘would fight with him in that quarrel and strike him
on the head with his sword. This he affirmed with great oaths.’
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on the head with his sword. This he affirmed with great oaths.’
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Gilbert’s deposition claimed that the duke believed the Tudor family lay under a curse because of Henry VII’s execution of the Earl of Warwick, back in 1499, and God would punish them ‘by not suffering the king’s issue to prosper, as appeared by the death of his son [Prince Henry] and that his daughters prosper not and that he had no issue male’.
The chancellor had heard Buckingham say several times that Wolsey was an [id]olater, taking counsel from a spirit how he might contin[ue to have th]e king’s favour and that he was the king’s bawd, showing him [what w]omen were most wholesome and best of complexion and that his life was so abominable that God would not allow it to continue.
Furthermore, he had heard the duke complain ‘he had done as good service as any man and was not rewarded and that the king gave fees and offices to boys, rather than noblemen’.
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The witnesses were then carted off to the Tower without Buckingham being able to cross-examine them, but Norfolk told the prisoner at the bar:
The king … has commanded that you shall have his laws ministered with favour and right to you.
If you have anything to say, you shall be heard.
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Buckingham certainly did and his angry words tumbled out for more than an hour, refuting the charges with surprising eloquence.
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He alleged that of all men, Norfolk’s own heir, the Earl of Surrey, his son-in-law, ‘hated him the most and had hurt him the most to the king’s majesty’.
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He alleged that of all men, Norfolk’s own heir, the Earl of Surrey, his son-in-law, ‘hated him the most and had hurt him the most to the king’s majesty’.
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Although the jury of peers debated ‘a great while’, the verdict, delivered on 16 May, was a foregone conclusion.
The king clearly considered Buckingham guilty and we have some curious evidence to support that statement. On the reverse of an earlier private letter from Rome to Richard Pace, Henry’s secretary had jotted down some obscure memoranda to himself. At the top is this sentence, written in Latin: ‘The king is convinced that Buckingham will be found
guilty and be condemned by the lords and for this matter and for the affairs of Ireland, a Parliament will be summoned.’ Other notes follow – the duke’s confessor and the monk Hopkins had been sent to the Tower; ‘Arthur Pole [Buckingham’s cousin] has been expelled [from] the court’; and finally ‘as to the Countess of Salisbury [whose daughter Henry Stafford, the duke’s son married], nothing has yet been decided on account of her noble birth and many virtues’.
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guilty and be condemned by the lords and for this matter and for the affairs of Ireland, a Parliament will be summoned.’ Other notes follow – the duke’s confessor and the monk Hopkins had been sent to the Tower; ‘Arthur Pole [Buckingham’s cousin] has been expelled [from] the court’; and finally ‘as to the Countess of Salisbury [whose daughter Henry Stafford, the duke’s son married], nothing has yet been decided on account of her noble birth and many virtues’.
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When the peers returned, each was asked by Norfolk: ‘What say you of Sir Edward, Duke of Buckingham, touching these high treasons?’ Beginning with the junior baron, each one solemnly placed his right hand on his breast and replied: ‘I say that he is guilty.’ Every time, Norfolk scribbled each peer’s verdict on a small piece of parchment in his narrow, cramped handwriting:
Dicit quod et culpabilis
– ‘Asserted guilty’.
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Dicit quod et culpabilis
– ‘Asserted guilty’.
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Buckingham was brought back into court from a nearby house called Paradise where he had awaited the verdict. Norfolk sat silent, agitated and sweating profusely. He seemed to compose himself, bowed low to the court and stared hard at the prisoner. Then, breathing deeply, he declared: ‘Sir Edward, you have heard how you are indicted of high treason. You pleaded not guilty, putting yourself to the judgement of your peers [who] have found you guilty.’ Norfolk suddenly burst into torrents of tears, sobbing uncontrollably. It was some time before he could bring himself to pronounce on his friend Buckingham the sentence reserved for traitors –
to be hanged, cut down alive, your members to be cut off and cast into the fire, your bowels burnt before you, your head smitten off and your body quartered and divided at the king’s will. And God have mercy on your soul. Amen.
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The axe was turned so that its edge faced him. Buckingham denied he was a traitor. ‘I was never one, but my lords, I nothing malign [you] for that you have done to me but the eternal God forgive you my death and I do.’ He was then led away to a barge. Lovell wanted him to sit on the cushions and carpet provided, but the duke refused, saying, ‘When I went to Westminster I was Duke of Buckingham, now I am but … the most caitiff [wretched prisoner] of the world.’ They landed at the Temple
stairs and Buckingham was led through the city amid crowds who ‘wept and lamented’.
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stairs and Buckingham was led through the city amid crowds who ‘wept and lamented’.
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At about eleven the following morning Buckingham was escorted out of the Tower by the Sheriffs of London, Sir John Skevington and John Kyme, and led to the public scaffold on Tower Hill. Buckingham climbed the steps with resolution and asked the crowd to pray for him, ‘trusting to die the king’s true man, whom, through his own negligence and lack of grace, he had offended’. Darkly, he warned his fellow nobles to beware his fate.
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