Great Harry

by Erickson, Carolly, 1943-

  Henry was in fact at an extraordinary peak of creative power, not only intellectually but artistically. His mind ranged widely, and illumined everything it touched. He drew up visionary architectural plans. He commissioned painters, sculptors and master craftsmen to decorate his palaces and guided their work with craftsmanlike taste. He endowed colleges and patronized students and scholars. He returned with renewed fervor to composing love songs and instrumental pieces, writing two motets—"O Lord the Maker of All Things" and "Quam Pulchra Es"— that entered the enduring canon of English church music.

  As a composer and performer Henry was a part of a broad transition in court music, from the highly professional and traditional style of the late Middle Ages, with its chivalrous basse-dances, its set forms and preference for the harp to a newer, more fluid Italianate style. Amateurs and professionals performed together the lively Italian pavanes and galliards, the amateurs learning from music-masters to read written notes and to follow the intricate patterns of part songs. The king had long been the most illustrious amateur musician in the country, and in Anne Boleyn he found a talented companion to share his enthusiasm.

  Musicians continued to be an important group in the royal household. Under the leadership of Hugh Wodehouse, "marshal of the king's minstrels," dozens of players were kept on the household rolls to provide entertainment at all hours. A corps of sixteen trumpeters, their instruments hung with banners and tassels, attended the king; his minstrels Pero and Nowell, Peter Taberet and John Bolenger sang and spun out their patter as he dined. Francis Weston was one of the royal lutenists; another musician (and incomparable dancer) was Mark Smeaton. The destinies of both men were to be closely linked to that of Anne Boleyn. The king and his players performed on a vast collection of instruments, many of them precious works of art. Among Henry's hundreds of recorders, lutes, and keyboard instruments was a silver organ with gold ornaments; some of the other pieces were gilded and studded with jewels. ^^

  The waxing of Henry's creative powers may have owed something to circumstances, for after 1529 he found himself for the first time in sole command of government.

  Cardinal Wolsey, who had for so long been the unshakable pillar on which English government rested, had been swept from the scene. Soon after his colleague Campeggio left the country Wolsey was indicted for exceeding his legatine authority and was stripped of his secular offices and most of his incomparable wealth. Thomas More became chancellor; Wolsey was ordered to go north to York, to the archbishopric he had never seen, if he hoped to avoid worse punishments. His fall was the

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  king's decision, influenced by Anne and her Norfolk relatives. Norfolk himself could not restrain his spite toward his old enemy. When the cardinal was slow to leave the capital the duke sent word to him that "if he go not away, I will tear him with my teeth."

  Heavy-hearted and ill with worry, Wolsey started out on his journey, leaving behind for the king's agents an immensely long inventory, carefully written out in his own hand, of all that he possessed. He had been given the humiliating and tedious task of compiling this document without assistance, under strict instructions to leave nothing out. At the same time, watches were set at the port cities to make certain he did not try to leave the country with his treasures.^^

  In his fear and uncertainty Wolsey was haunted by the prophecy he had held in mind with dread ever since the king's infatuation with Anne Boleyn had become his central passion.

  When the cow rideth the bull. Then, priest, beware thy skull.

  For years the people had recited this verse in dark anticipation of Wolsey's loss of favor, and the cardinal had long believed "that a woman should be his confusion." Throughout his agonizing months at York he alternately cursed Anne as the cause of his downfall and mused over how he might gain her clemency, never doubting that she was responsible for his fate.

  Henry had allowed his former servant to retain not only his bishopric but a pension of three thousand angels and personal furnishings adequate to keep up appearances—eighty horses and their trappings, six mules, enough tapestry and plate to equip five rooms, £300 in clothing and more than enough fish, salt, oxen and muttons to feed his immense, bloated body for many months.^^ These provisions proved to be insufficient: the portion of his pension the king had advanced to Wolsey was soon spent, and he was left without enough money to repair the decayed episcopal residence waiting for him at York. He had lost most of his servants, and, temporarily, his baggage; for months he camped helplessly under the leaking roof of his shabby mansion, "wrapped in misery and need on every side, not knowing where to be succoured or relieved."^^ To compound his distress the cardinal's illness worsened, and he had to be treated with leeches—"very hungry ones," his doctor prescribed—and with "vomitive electuary." He had never in his life been so wretched. In a letter to Gardiner Wolsey signed himself "Thomas the miserable. Cardinal of York.""

  It was Wolsey's physician, Augustin de Augustinis, who betrayed him in the end, supplying his enemies with the testimony they needed to destroy him. Wolsey had sought the help of the French king against Henry, the physician said, "singing the tune as they wished him"; afterward de Augustinis was lodged in Norfolk's house "like a prince," while his patient was accused of high treason and seized by another old enemy, Anne Boleyn's former love Henry Percy.

  The moment he had feared most had come. In desperate anguish

  Wolsey tried to starve himself, refusing food for days "hoping rather to finish his life in this way than in a more shameful one." Unsuccessful in his attempt he finally began the journey southward, but the final stages of his illness overtook him on the way and he died among the monks of Leicester. He was buried in a place of infamy, in the church the people called "the tyrants' sepulchre," alongside Richard III.2"*

  "Oh, the slippery turns of this world!" Erasmus exclaimed when he heard of Wolsey's fall. Others were less philosophical in their reactions. Courtiers the cardinal had abused for so many years gloated noisily over his fate, while the common people cursed his memory. Wolsey's former servant Thomas Cromwell heard a countryman say that the cardinal "was not worthy to wipe his horses' feet," and other things too harsh to preserve in writing, while in every village tavern men and women reminded one another that the old prophecy had been fulfilled, and the cow had ridden the bull at last.

  At first Henry did nothing but complain about the monumental chaos Wolsey had left behind. Governmental affairs were in such great confusion, the king told Katherine, that it was all he could do to restore order, even though he worked at it night and day.^^ As the months went by, however, Henry came to realize the immensity of the task his chancellor had grappled with for so many years, and to appreciate as never before Wolsey's uncomplaining efficiency. Compared to the late cardinal, his councilors seemed like blundering novices, and he told them so. When they displeased him he shouted at them in a rage that Wolsey had been "a better man than any of them for managing matters," and, repeating himself for emphasis, he stormed out of the Council chamber.^^

  Dissatisfied with his councilors, preferring to fill Wolsey's role himself, Henry bent under the burden of a greater workload than he had ever known. And as he struggled with it, amid the frustrations and occasional excitements of the controversy over his divorce, amid extraordinary domestic tensions and personal stress, Henry felt from time to time the assaults of age, the cutting edge of his own mortality.

  The headaches and "rheums"—catarrhs—that had given him such pain while he was writing his treatise on the divorce continued to attack him in these years, along with sore throats and occasional hoarseness. In 1532, at forty-one, a severe sinus attack and toothache laid him low, and from time to time another affliction not only gave him torturous pain but hampered his movement until his impatience turned to rage.

  He developed a varicose ulcer on his thigh, an angry red inflammation that no physician could cure for long and that he tried to treat himself with the "posset for swelling of the legs" listed in the records of hi
s medical remedies.2^ The ulcer was chronic; from an angry local infection it would from time to time spread outward and downward, causing the lower leg to swell and throb with acute pain. More and more of the veins became inflamed, then thrombosed; the exposed nerve endings sent stabs of pain up and down the entire leg, and led to dangerously high fevers.^^

  If his increasing physical ills unsettled Henry his mental stress was at least as troublesome. He had clearly determined the course he meant to take, to divorce Katherine and marry Anne, and he believed in the

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  Tightness of his decision under divine judgment and human logic. Yet the years had passed and rightness had not yet prevailed. There were too many forces inimical to divine judgments, too many voices eager to confound human logic. Relativist arguments pulled at Henry from many sides, shaking (though not dislodging) his confidence and forcing him to rethink, reformulate and defend his position time and again. As in his youth, he worked into the words of his songs the thoughts that weighed on him.

  But love is a thing given by God, In that therefore can be none odd, But perfect in deed and between two; Wherefore, then, should we it eschew?^^

  His desire to make Anne queen seemed on one level such a simple and natural thing; why was it that so few others saw it as he did? The candid, boyish man in Henry grew more and more bewildered even as the shrewd, perceptive politician in him weighed his opponents' motives and plotted his counter-moves. His strategy did not falter. The pope issued threats against him; he responded by calling Clement ignorant or guilty of simony, and by threatening to settle the nullity suit within England in despite of papal authority.^^ The emperor spoke of war in defense of Katherine; Henry announced he was displeased with Charles' haughtiness and was thinking of recalling his ambassador from the imperial court. The powers of Catholic Europe stood against him; he sought allies among the forces of religious opposition, the followers of Martin Luther.

  Yet his resolute belligerence masked an underlying tension. When he learned that Luther had decided to support Katherine, Henry began to suffer from insomnia. He was reported to be wakeful at night, even more tormented than usual by headaches and restlessness. For some days he was "ill in bed in consequence of the grief and anger he had lately gone through. "31

  Henry's body was betraying the torment of his mind, a torment he revealed to Du Bellay in January of 1530. The king took the ambassador into his cabinet, "where his books are," and kept him there for more than four hours, talking over his situation. What Henry revealed to the Frenchman was not free from calculation, but the impression he made was authentic. "In substance," Du Bellay wrote afterward, "he plainly confesses that he finds himself in such perplexity that he can no longer liveinit."32

  Thus pray all the citizens, wife, child, and man, God save King Henry, and his Spouse Queen Anne!

  Anne Boleyn's coronation procession wound its way through London in May of 1533 to the sound of glorious music. In her open litter of shimmering white cloth of gold, under a golden canopy hung with silver bells Anne was carried through the streets of the capital amid singing and playing sweeter than any within memory. At Gracechurch Apollo and the nine muses, seated in a pageant as if "among the mountains, sitting on the mount of Parnassus," played sweetly to her on their instruments. At the Leadenhall a child sang a long ballad in her honor as another pageant unfolded, in which an angel descended from the "heavenly roof of a castle to crown a white falcon—Anne's device—while Saint Anne watched nearby. Choirs saluted Anne with "great melody" at several points throughout the city, and there was "marvellous sweet harmony both of song and instrument." On the roof of St. Martin's Church a large choir of men and boys sang new ballads written in praise of Anne, while at the conduit in Fleet Street the air was filled with "chimes melodiously sounding." Here too a spectacle had been erected, a town with four turrets, from each of which came such music "that it seemed to be an heavenly noise, and was much regarded and praised."

  The lavish outpourings of songs and pageantry were more than matched by the visual spectacle—the houses and shopfronts hung with velvet and cloth of tissue and rich tapestries, the resplendent blue and violet and scarlet liveries of Anne's attendants, the bright clothing of the Londoners who choked the streets and crowded balcony windows to see the new queen pass. The center of attention was Anne herself, resplendent in white robes bordered with royal ermine, her luxuriant black hair crowned with a coif and a circlet of rare jewels.

  To the Londoners who came to gape at her on that May afternoon the sight of Anne Boleyn paraded past them as their rightful queen must have been little short of amazing. Rarely if ever in English history had a knight's daughter risen to such an eminence so quickly. Never had a royal mistress, no matter how beloved of the king, supplanted a reigning queen. And no queen within memory had worn to her coronation festivities the loose gowns and broad stomachers of a woman with child.

  Seen in retrospect Anne's exaltation had proceeded by logical steps—first her assumption of precedence over Katherine at court func-

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  tions, then in 1532 her creation as marquess of Pembroke, and her presence at the king's side as his consort on his excursion to Calais to meet the French king. To be sure, there had been talk of marriage between them for six years. Norfolk told Chapuys that only his opposition and that of Anne's father had prevented the king from marrying Anne early in 1532; many believed the wedding would surely take place once the couple was in France, where no popular uprisings could mar the celebration. As it happened, the marriage was celebrated, in the utmost secrecy, late in January of 1533, with only Anne's immediate family, two of her intimate women friends and a priest from her diocese present.^

  It was nearly three months after her marriage that Anne first appeared in public in royal state. On Easter morning trumpeters heralded her as she went to mass, dressed in cloth of gold and decked with a rich freight of jewels—Katherine's jewels. Norfolk's daughter held the long train of her regal gown as she entered the church, and sixty young ladies attended her, and if all this pomp were inadequate to indicate her new status the king's preachers provided the ultimate proof. In their prayers for the king and the queen they substituted Anne's name for Katherine's, acknowledging in the sight of God a transition about to be completed in law.^

  Just at this time Henry's new archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, was beginning proceedings which were meant to put an end to the controversy over the king's relationship to Katherine once and for all. On May 23 their marriage was pronounced invalid, and shortly afterward a second judgment held that Henry's marriage to Anne was legal and binding. A papal judgment had, after all, been circumvented. Henry had determined to let his English archbishop stand as final arbiter of his conscience.^

  It was one thing to change Anne's legal status; it was another to wring respect for her from courtiers who for years had shown, at best, an insincere deference to Anne for her royal lover's sake. At her Eastertide appearance Henry was reported to be "very watchful" of his courtiers' reactions, searching their faces for signs of disapproval, and afterward he "begged the lords to go and visit and make their court to the new queen."'* In the next weeks he went ahead to complete the outward changes marking Katherine's dispossession, appointing Anne's household officials and hearing their oaths of loyalty to the new queen, ordering Katherine's arms stripped from the royal barge so that it could be readied for Anne to ride in to her coronation, even ordering Katherine's arms removed from the stone gate of the great hall at Westminster—an ignominy heretofore reserved for traitors to the crown.^ But at every stage Henry paused to read the temper of his court, for there were many who privately frowned on his second marriage, and some whose disapproval took forthright and even violent form.

  In her years as Henry's sweetheart Anne had alienated most of the leading men and women of the court, and was frequently at odds with the blood relatives who at one time had been her staunchest suppo
rters. Her insults drove Henry Guildford to resign his offices. She failed to gain the loyalty of her aunt, Norfolk's wife, who remained so staunch a defender

  of Katherine's rights that she refused to attend Anne's coronation. Anne's sarcasm and hauteur so offended Norfolk and her father that they exchanged harsh words with her more than once, but it was Suffolk who proved to be the most bitter opponent of Anne and her faction.

  Charles Brandon had long opposed Henry's plan to make Anne his queen, and in 1530, after bringing the king a story about Anne's illicit relations with another courtier, he was sent away to his country estates. Anne fumed and nursed her anger against Brandon for a long time, then relented and allowed Henry to send for him again. But the enmity was renewed in April of 1532, this time because of "opprobrious language" spoken against Anne by Brandon's wife Mary. Norfolk took it upon himself to avenge Anne's honor and, calling together some twenty of his hired followers, he ordered them to assault Suffolk's men within the sanctuary of Westminster. It was all Henry could do to restrain Suffolk from joining in person the brawl that resulted, and for weeks afterward the courtiers talked of little but the spectacular clash of factions. As often happened, Anne had the last word; she accused Brandon of seducing his own daughter.^

  That the woman who had so brazenly put not only the royal household but the entire court in turmoil should actually become queen seemed almost beyond belief. Against the advice of his councilors, in despite of Katherine's rights, heedless of the views of his subjects and of the threatened menace of the pope. King Henry had made Anne his queen, and meant to have her crowned. "All the world is astonished at it, for it looks like a dream," a contemporary wrote, "and even those who take her part know not whether to laugh or cry."^