by G Lawrence
George had his own tutors, but he shared some lessons with Mary and me. Many outdoor activities such as archery, hawking, riding and hunting we did together. We shot at the archery butts in the park at Hever. We rode through the woods surrounding the castle, learning to control our horses and master our own bodies in the chase. We were taught the rudimentary skills of hunting with the hawk and hound in the marshlands at Hever, which was fertile country for the pursuit of wild game to bring to the kitchens. Sometimes our mother would invite others, the children of other noble families, to come and visit with us. It was another part of our training for court; we needed to know how to get along with others, how to charm and how to make friends with ease.
A neighbouring noble family at Hever, the Wyatts, were our most frequent visitors. Thomas and Mary Wyatt were the children of Sir Henry Wyatt, a Privy Councillor and advisor to King Henry VII. Mary Wyatt played with Mary and me and Tom Wyatt spent time with George. Little Tom Wyatt already considered himself a great hunter and commander of armies, just as George did. The two boys trained in the arts of war together, riding at the rings to prepare for the honour of the joust, learning to wrestle and to hunt like valiant young men. I often wished I could be at their side, rather than having to behave myself like a lady should, as I played with Mary and Mary Wyatt with our dolls in the gardens. We would all ride together, always accompanied by our elders or servants, and when I rode in those groups, I was always trying to out-best the boys. Sometimes, when I managed to outstrip them, I would look back on them with a pride-filled face flushed red with happiness and exertion. But often, the boys would surpass me, and when they did so, they hardly bothered to crow their victory over me, making me feel even less interesting than I felt already. I wanted their attention. I wanted to feel as though I were a part of their lives they could not be without. But I was not… not then.
George and Tom liked to boast to us girls that they would be ready to go to war immediately, should the time and the need arise. For it was not so long ago that our country had been torn apart by the houses of York and Lancaster fighting for the throne. Then, when those wars ended, the victor, King Edward IV, had died suddenly. The throne had been usurped by the evil King Richard, who had murdered his own nephews, Edward V and his brother Richard, the little Duke of York. Our King, Henry VII, had fought Richard at Bosworth, and had won, freeing England from the tyranny of evil.
That was the way our history was taught to us when we were small. As I grew older, I found there were other views on the righteousness of Henry VII’s slim claim to the throne, and even a few who believed that Richard had not been so very evil after all. These things were little spoken of unless in whispers, for to talk of anything other than the glory of the King of England was dangerous. Still, there were whispers. There are always more ways than but one, to see the path of history and how men made their way upon it. These were things though that I learned as I grew older, not things I knew then. To the imagination of a child, there is good and there is evil, and there is little in between the two. We were taught in terms of black and white; Richard III had been evil, and Henry VII was good. Good had won over evil, and so all was well in our land of England.
And, should the glorious hero of Bosworth need them, George and Tom boasted they would be ready to fly to his side at a moment’s notice. It was a good story, a fine bold brag for little boys to make, but I shuddered when I thought of those days of war which I had never known, of family set against family, torn by their loyalties to the houses of York or Lancaster. I remember thinking how marvellous George and Tom Wyatt were for being so brave, and how sad I should be if anything happened to them.
Tom Wyatt was a handsome little boy. When he came to visit us, he and George were often too busy about their own business to pay attention to the girls in the family. But Tom’s glance sometimes lingered on Mary, even though we were so young. Sometimes he would pluck a flower from its stalk and present it to her with a flourish like a court gallant. Mary would blush rosy and beautiful and mutter something in thanks to him with a curtsey. I could see that Tom liked the confusion and stammering that his gifts created in her, but I could not help thinking that Mary looked beautiful, but foolish, when she accepted his flowers.
If I were given a rose by Tom Wyatt, then I swore that I should look him back in the eyes, curtsey gracefully, as I had practised so often, and thank him curtly for his present, before sweeping off slowly and elegantly back to the house without looking back.
But Tom Wyatt gave his flowers to Mary, not to me.
I was not the one he saw then. I was not worthy of much notice, being little, young and dark. But I longed for those flowers, as I longed to be the one who was noticed, the one who was seen… the one who was beautiful.
Chapter Three
1509
Hever Castle, Kent
When I was eight years old, the old King, Henry VII, died. He had been ailing, our parents said, for some time… even since the death of his wife Elizabeth in 1503. Now he was gone. George seemed particularly sad, even though he had never met nor seen the King, for Henry VII had been the hero of his childhood games. The victor of the Battle of Bosworth Field, the man who united the torn lands of England… he was gone now from our lives but never from our games. A hero lost to life, after all, remains forever a star emblazoned on the skies of the imagination. He becomes more righteous, more perfect, more holy than he ever could have been in life. In death, our heroes become saints. That was what Henry VII became to George, in the years of his childhood; an image of perfection, the warrior King. With my sharp ears, however, I heard things of the dead King that George would never wish to hear.
Henry VII had been, I heard it whispered, an obscure claimant to the throne, the last tenuous heir of the house of Lancaster. It sounded so romantic: the last heir of the house of Lancaster. It fired my imagination thinking of him; his years as the outcast, living as an exile in France for fear of his life, then to return home at the head of a great army and to defeat Richard in battle, proving that God was at his side! How glorious! As a child, I always imagined Henry VII must be like one of the knights of the fabled King Arthur’s court. But I also heard the servants whisper that the King had been miserly, suspicious, closed-mouthed and mistrustful. Although his people might have respected him, they had not loved him. I thought often it was a good thing that George had not heard these things of his hero, for they took a little of the shine from the armour of our dead King for me.
George and Tom Wyatt would often play at being knights at the Battle of Bosworth, but neither could agree to fight for Richard, so they would both fight on the side of King Henry VII, slaying imaginary foes as Mary and I looked on in sweeping admiration; we would be their prizes when they won. Tom loved to play Henry VII so that he could claim Mary as his new wife, Elizabeth of York. I was never allowed to be Queen Elizabeth; I had to be another lady of the court, often nameless. I was always the lesser prize. I became used to being overlooked, since Mary was the one with the obvious beauties; but I still did not like it.
After the death of Henry VII, his son and heir came to the throne. The new King was proclaimed on the 22nd of April 1509; St George’s day. Given all that we would come to hear of the new King, it seemed most fitting to us later that he was proclaimed king on the feast day of this heroic saint and warrior of God. In June, King Henry VIII ascended to the throne. There had been a gap of some months between Henry VII dying, and his son’s ascension. The new King had been just a little too young to claim his throne under the terms of his father’s will, and so England had been ruled for a few months by the Prince’s grandmother, the pious and formidable, Lady Margaret Beaufort, as regent.
Our father rode home from court after Henry VII was laid to rest and he had done his last duties to his former master. During his brief visit, our father informed us that we were all to travel to London to see the coronation procession of the new King. We were so excited at the thought of this that we barely slept. All games fr
om that day, to the day we left for London, were of the coronation and court. Our father was to travel ahead of our family party, as he was to be made a Knight of the Bath at one of the ceremonies of the coronation; a prospect that excited George’s imagination in particular. Our family party, led by our mother, and protected by trusted servants, were to follow our father later. We would not see the actual coronation, as only adult nobles were to be there, but we were to watch the eve of the coronation procession as it rode through the streets of London, which was quite enough to have us excited to the tips of our toes. We had never seen London, never seen the great city. We had never thought we would be honoured so by our parents as to be taken close to the glittering world of the court whilst we were still children. We were all determined to excel ourselves in good behaviour, lest we be stripped of this, the most exciting prospect to ever appear in our little lives.
Finally the day came; we were dressed in our newest and finest clothes. My smock and hose were fresh laundered and clean. My gown was a deep and beautiful green with a kirtle of crimson underneath, which could be seen through a slit in the outer skirt which ran up the front of the gown. My sleeves matched the colour of my gown, but had edges of crimson to match my fine kirtle. Mary was in crimson with a kirtle of green and sleeves of scarlet with green edging. We were opposites of each other; the one mirroring the other’s style and beauty. The bold green looked well on me, and the bright crimson accentuated Mary’s golden colouring. We had worked on much of these items ourselves, with our mother’s maids keeping a close eye on our sewing and stitching.
Our hair was not loose around our shoulders as it was on normal days, but gathered behind new, fine gable hoods made especially for this trip to the city. The hood stood near the front of the forehead and from the back of it hung dark-coloured silk which covered all our hair. We looked most adult in our new clothes. Our hoods were decorated in fake, paste-made jewels, but they looked so real that we felt very rich and grand indeed. Paste-made jewels, after all, were not cheap to make or come by. My mother braided our hair under our hoods to keep it under control, and gave us one piece of her own, real jewellery each. For Mary there was a jewelled brooch which decorated the centre of her crimson gown. For me there was an enamelled tablet that was worn around the waist, with a circular pattern of knots held with a gold chain that accentuated the slimness of the waist and the wealth of its owner. I loved that little tablet dearly, and eventually, yielding to great persuasion, my mother allowed me to keep it as my own.
George’s doublet was a tawny red and glittered with gems and little seed pearls, all real ones, since he was the heir. His legs were clad in close-fitting black silk hose and his hat was the same colour as the doublet, but finished with some beautiful white feathers that swung out from the ridge of the hat elegantly.
I gaped, open-mouthed, to see him looking so grand, and then I laughed and clapped my hands together when I saw that he, too, was staring in deep admiration at Mary and me in all our finery.
It was very early in the morning when we mounted horse and rode the long miles to the river; we were to use the river to reach London itself. Our servants carried tapers to light the path as we rode; our shadows looked like giants riding monsters into battle.
It was still quite dark even as we reached the river, and started along it to London on our barge; it was quicker to travel into London by river, the roads were not always good and were to be packed with people crowding into the city for the celebrations. There were sometimes bands of robbers, too, who might prey on a party made of women and children, even guarded by servants. So by boat we travelled most of the way.
The early morning light turned grey and silver and blue. The air was still and although birds were singing their morning song, there was yet a great peace in the countryside. I was taken with a feeling that something of great importance was happening this day; the coronation was more than just a king coming to the throne. There was more expectation than that in the air that surrounded us. It was as though the whole world were holding its breath at this moment, waiting for Henry VIII to take his crown. As though something was about to occur which would be remembered for all time.
I did not know it then, just how important this day would be to my life in particular, but at that time, dressed in my finest, my dark eyes shining in the dawn’s light with excitement and anticipation, I seemed to have some sense of the significance of the day. Although the river was already busy with boats of both rich and poor, we were all quiet on our barge as we moved up the river towards the great city. The White Tower of the Tower of London shone out like a beacon to greet our arrival; I believe that all of us felt that something momentous was in the air that day…
For this new king was young and generous, where his father had been old, and some said, mean, although they would have not dared to say that in his lifetime if they valued their heads. This new king had the blood of both the two royal houses that had split the country for so long with civil war. Henry VIII’s veins ran with the blood of both Lancaster and York; he would unite the country just as the two houses had united in his blood. The new King, it was said, was most handsome, resembling his grandfather Edward IV much more than his own father; he was generous of spirit, and learned in the new teachings of humanism. This new king was a scholar, fond of books, poetry and learned talk, but he was also a man of action; he loved to ride and joust and play tennis. He was both athletic and academic. In fact, it seemed from the way that everyone talked of him, that he was all good things and none bad; he was all virtue and his vices were shrugged off amicably as nothing but the healthy faults of a young gallant.
He had lately married a princess of Spain, Katherine of Aragon, who had languished alone and abandoned until he swept through her castle doors and claimed her. She had once been the wife of his elder brother, Arthur. But when Arthur died early in their marriage, she had been left in England, much alone. Her father, King Ferdinand of Aragon, had not wanted to pay for her return to Spain, and had desired his daughter to marry yet into England’s royal house. Some even said that Ferdinand had wanted the widowed Henry VII to take his former daughter-in-law to his bed. I know not if the old King ever considered this, but he never took up the offer if it was made. Henry VII had turned shy about marrying his sole remaining heir to the forlorn princess… He had begun to think there might be a greater marriage prize to be had for the hand of his remaining heir. There was another reason too… which people always seemed to have forgotten later on. There were concerns raised of a match between Henry VIII and Katherine due to a passage in the Bible, in the book of Leviticus; a man should not marry his brother’s widow, lest the marriage be cursed in the eyes of God and remain childless. Concerns of both canon law and political advantage kept Henry VII from marrying his last-living son to the daughter of Spain. And so, poor Princess Katherine had languished, stuck between two worlds, floating in an earthly purgatory. Her own father had sent no money to maintain her household from Spain, and her once father-in-law, Henry VII had wished to spend no coin on her either. The young Princess had been forced to pawn her own jewels and plate in order to pay her servants, and to buy food. For a long time it seemed as though this poor girl might have faded into obscurity, abandoned and forgotten by her family and her country. But this had all changed when Henry VIII came to the throne and decided he wanted to marry her; now Katherine had her hero, as perhaps we all did. She was brought out of her castle, as the new King swore he would have her as a wife and no other. A dispensation was issued by the Pope to allow the match, on the grounds that Katherine and her first husband, Arthur, had never lain together as man and wife, for Katherine swore she was an untouched virgin. If such was true, then the warnings of Leviticus would not apply to this match between England and Spain. And with such dispensation in place, the two were married to one another.
Riding in to rescue a princess from a life of neglect and distress was something typical, we would come to find, of the character of Henry VIII. He loved
the old ways of chivalry and courtly love, and could never resist placing himself into the part of a knight. Pageants and entertainments at court were often created around stories and ideals such as this, and Henry VIII was an avid participant.
To us then, with the stories we were told, Henry VIII was romantic and chivalrous. He was a knight and a prince; he was a scholar, a man of God and a warrior; he was the greatest king to ever have been offered to us. People said that his reign would be the coming of a Golden Age of England. We were blessed with such a king to rule us.
Mary, George and I were captivated by the image of perfection that we held in our imaginations. We longed to see this great king and offer him our allegiance with all the others flocking to London on this goodly day.
Chapter Four
