Great Harry

by Erickson, Carolly, 1943-

  When the women arrived he received them all "with much gaiety," and observers watched eagerly to see whether he showed special interest in any of them. Some thought they detected a new favorite: Lord Cobham's sister, a woman of both wit and beauty who, it was said, might well be disposed to follow Catherine Howard's model if given the chance. Several other names were put forward after the banqueting as possible sweethearts for the king, but were dropped almost as soon as they arose.^^ In fact, as Chapuys saw clearly, there were few women likely to covet the role of queen. Henry was aging, he was physically unlovable, he was subject to raging irritability. And his wives seemed to be accursed. Parliament had recently added another impediment. Any woman marry-

  ing the king would henceforth be required to declare, on pain of death, that no charge of misbehavior could be brought against her. And if she lied, others who knew the truth had to come forward or face imprisonment for life. ^^

  Two months after Catherine Howard's execution there was still no sign of a new love. Henry continued to surround himself with ladies, but more from long habit than current interest. His councilors saw his widowed state as a lost opportunity, and urged him to remember that he had only one son, and that one a fragile child. Only months earlier Edward's life had been in danger, and in the spring of 1542 his doctors were predicting that he was '*not of constitution to live long."^^ Despite the ill fortune that had attended the last two royal marriages, Henry was under some pressure to take his happiness in his hands and try once again.

  One woman at least knew exactly whom Henry should marry—or rather re-marry. Anne of Cleves could hardly have been more delighted at the news of her successor's disgrace. She ordered her household to move immediately to Richmond in order to be nearer the king, and it was noted that "gentlemen of the duke of Cleves" were present at the trial of Dereham and Culpepper. Anne had kept herself discreetly visible ever since Queen Catherine's accession, dining occasionally at court, exchanging gifts with her former husband and behaving so disarmingly toward the new queen that Catherine welcomed her as a friend. On one occasion Anne supped with Catherine and Henry, then stayed after the king had gone to bed to dance and talk with Catherine far into the night.^^ When Catherine's jewels were inventoried after her imprisonment it was found that one of her rings was missing, whose stone was said to possess "some virtue against spasms." She had given the ring to Anne; so that the inventory might be complete Henry sent some of his privy councilors to get it back.*^

  Henry's subjects saw remarriage to Anne of Cleves as only right and humane. Though mistreated and cast aside she had accepted her lot graciously, they said; she had grown "more beautiful than she ever was," and besides, she had borne the king's child. The false rumor of Anne's pregnancy was widespread. Two men were bold enough to repeat it to the royal officers. The fall of Queen Catherine, they said, was God's judgment against Henry for deserting Anne, "since she was known to have gone away in the family way from the king, and had actually been confined."^^ Anne was more pitied by the people than Katherine of Aragon had ever been, Marillac wrote. Everywhere she was praised as "the sweetest, most gracious and kindest queen" England had ever known. How could Henry possibly refuse to take her back?^^

  The people's hopes rose when they heard that the king and his former wife exchanged gifts at New Year's. Anne had sent him some valuable cloth, and had received some glass pots and flagons in return. As Henry moved about the countryside near London during the holiday season it was said he would come to Richmond and stay with Anne, and so begin a new courtship. Instead he took "quite a different route," and stayed well out of Anne's way until long after the new year began.

  Father, you are an aged man, Your head is white, your bearde is gray, It were a shame at these your yeares For you to ryse in such a fray.

  I

  In the queen's privy closet at Hampton Court, Henry VIII stood before Bishop Gardiner and repeated his marriage vows. He spoke the words as the bishop said them, though by now he knew them so well he needed no prompting.

  "I, Henry, take thee, Catherine, to my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death us depart, and thereto I plight thee my troth."

  The protonotary who recorded all that happened at the ceremony wrote that the king spoke his vows "with a joyful countenance," and that when the bishop asked if anyone present knew of any impediment to the marriage—a very grave question, considering the recent laws governing royal wives—there were no voices raised in opposition. Indeed the small group of relatives and courtiers in attendance seemed only too pleased to see their king married. More than any previous ceremony this had the air of a family wedding, with Henry's daughters Mary and Elizabeth, his niece Margaret Douglas, his brother-in-law Edward Seymour all present (Prince Edward did not attend), along with several of the new queen's relatives.

  The woman who stood beside Henry as he made his pledge, holding his hand, steadying him a little was a mature, good-natured widow of thirty-one, Catherine Parr. She had been married twice before—once as a very young girl to an elderly lord who died "very old and distracted of memory" when she was seventeen, and once to John Neville, an aged Yorkshire knight who left her his substantial fortune and his three children on his death in this year of 1543. Catherine Parr was neither a beauty nor a coquette. Though she had a "lively and pleasing appearance," she was a serious, thoughtful woman whose intellectual tastes matched Henry's own. Wriothesley's view of Catherine as "a woman in my judgement, for virtue, wisdom and gentleness, most meet for his highness" was widely shared; "sure I am," he wrote, "his majesty had never a wife more agreeable to his heart than she is."^

  That she was willing to take on the irascible king in his declining

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  years—and his precocious, oddly-assorted children—said much for Catherine's capability and courage. "A fine burden Madame has taken on herself," Anne of Cleves remarked with contemptuous vulgarity when she heard of the marriage. Though the remark was meant literally, as a crude reference to Henry's bulk, in a broader sense Anne spoke the truth. Henry VIII's sixth queen put her life at risk, apparently wiUingly, with few rewards in view beyond the name of queen and the satisfaction of filling a difficult role with exceptional competence. Her cheerful sacrifice was all the more remarkable in that, when the king approached her, another man had already won her heart. Thomas Seymour, Jane Seymour's irrepressible, attractive brother, had proposed to Catherine. But for Henry's intervention she would have accepted him.

  Yet there she stood on her wedding day with her corpulent sovereign beside her, glad enough to take him as her third husband and lord.

  *'I, Catherine, take thee Henry to my wedded husband," she recited, **to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to be bonair and buxom in bed and at board, till death us depart, and thereto I plight thee my troth." There were no second thoughts. A week after the wedding Catherine wrote to her brother William Parr that her position as the king's wife was "the greatest joy and comfort that could happen to her."

  A member of Catherine's household once told her that her "rare goodness" made "every day a Sunday." It was a dubious compliment, but it would be a mistake to see in the queen either a tight-lipped, overserious churchgoer or a moralizing prude. Catherine's goodness was unmistakable, but so was her humanity. She kept no ascetic regimen, and was not overly conspicuous in her charities or other good works. She paid loving attention to everyday things, decorating her chamber with fresh flowers each day and tending to her greyhounds. She dressed gaily in French gowns and Venetian sleeves and pleats and shoes with gold trim. She saw to it that her stepchildren were equally well dressed. At Christmas of 1544 she ordered Prince Edward's tailor to make him a doublet and coat of crimson velvet with gilt buttons and gold braid, and a velvet cap with a feather.

  Queen Catherine's piety showed itself not in austerity but in serious study.
To her belief and religious devotion were matters worthy of much thought and concentration, and she labored to put her spiritual gleanings into written form. In her Prayers or Meditations, published in 1545 and exceedingly popular, she expressed in mystical language her search for illumination. "Send forth the hot flow of thy love to bum and consume the cloudy fantasies of my mind," she wrote. "Gather, O Lord, my wits and the powers of my soul together in thee and make me to despise all worldly things and by thy grace strongly to resist and overcome all motions and occasions of sin."^ Throughout her marriage to Henry Catherine would be composing her most ambitious work. The Lamentation of a Sinner, in which she "bewailed the ignorance of her blind life" and described her awakening to a holier way. The Lamentation gave much of the credit for her enlightenment to Henry, who like Moses had led England out of

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  "captivity and bondage" to Rome and into a purified faith. It also went beyond prevailing orthodoxy in upholding the primacy of faith in an almost Lutheran sense; this strain in Catherine's religious thinking, combined with her patronage of Protestant reformers, made her vulnerable to attack by the conservatives at court.

  Henry married Catherine Parr on July 12, 1543. Only three weeks earlier he had delivered a thundering ultimatum to the French ambassador. Unless the French acceded to his (impossible) demands, England and France would be at war within twenty days.

  Since 1540 the breach between Charles V and Francis I had been widening. The French had made common cause with the Turks, and this alliance, scandalous in its cynical disregard for the safety of Christendom, had put Hapsburg lands in peril on several fronts. Emboldened by Turkish support Francis went to war with Charles once more in the spring of 1542, and Charles, ever heedful of the possibility of an Anglo-French alliance, began to woo his uncle Henry. Not long afterward the English and imperialists came to terms, and war plans were made. After years of preparing his forces and reinvigorating his own belligerence, Henry was more than ready to go into battle.

  Recent successes in Scotland had whetted his appetite for military glory. In November of 1542 Norfolk had defeated a Scots army twenty thousand strong at Solway Moss, and in the aftermath of victory Henry had felt confident enough to try to consolidate his hold over the Scots by persuasion and politics rather than by force of arms. Organized opposition seemed to have vanished. The king, James V, died within weeks of the battle, leaving his throne to a girl child (Mary Stuart) six days old. James's mother, Margaret, had died in 1541. There was no locus of power, only warring factions and ambitious figures such as the earl of Arran, heir presumptive, who was eager to cooperate with the English. For the last six months, as he negotiated an alliance with the emperor Charles V and made final plans to go to war with the French, Henry bargained with Arran, arriving at what he believed to be a conclusive peace with the Scots on July 1. Under its terms. Prince Edward would marry the infant Princess Mary when she reached the age of ten, securing by a dynastic link the sovereignty Henry would exert in the interim.

  With Scots affairs in order, the king was free to live up to the challenge he had made to the French. His timetable called for immediate invasion, and in fact the signing of the Scots treaty coincided with the departure of the first contingent of English troops bound for Calais. Almost immediately, however, his arrangements in the north came unraveled. The forces opposing the English treaty and favoring Scotland's time-honored ties to France rose in strength to threaten Arran's shaky primacy. French arms and ships and munitions reinforced the opposition, and in December of 1543 a formal alliance between Scotland and France was signed.

  "Under the sun live not more beastly and unreasonable people than be here of all degrees," Henry's envoy Sadler wrote from Edinburgh, and the king agreed. The treachery of the Scots forced postponement of the invasion and created a dangerous second front on the northern border.

  Such a betrayal deserved nothing less than massive retaliation. In May of 1544, as soon as the harsh weather ended and campaigning season began, Edward Seymour, earl of Hertford, went northward with an army to punish the Scots. The orders the king gave him were cruel. He was to reduce Edinburgh and other towns to ruins, laying waste their structures "so that the upper stone may be the nether and not one stick stand by another." Men, women and children were to be slain. Hertford's argument for moderation—which he saw as strategically preferable to ruthless destruction—was ignored, and he carried out Henry's commands with punishing exactness. Most of the capital was burned to the ground.

  This time the Scots were less resilient in defeat. For the time being at least, Hertford's devastation prevented a resurgence of opposition, and allowed the French invasion plans to move ahead.

  During April and May of 1544 the fighting men were summoned and equipped, and the paraphernalia of war assembled. Baking and brewing equipment was ordered, with large quantities of wheat and malt and hops. There were ovens made to be carried on wagons and mills "which grind as the wagon moves," and cohorts of bakers, brewers and underbrewers and their assistants to operate them. Fodder for the horses and meat for the soldiers was purchased and stored at warehouses beside the ports where the men would embark and across the Channel at Calais. Iron, lead, copper, saltpeter—all the raw stuff of weaponry—were on hand in good supply, and at the Tower, the mint was in operation day and night, turning silver plate and other precious ornaments from the plundered abbeys into coins to pay the provisioners and soldiers. Long lists of necessities were drawn up, with the word "dispatched" written beside items attended to. Many of the details were referred to the king himself, as there was no single administrator to oversee everything, as Wolsey had done in the 1513 campaign. Thus it was often left to Henry to worry over the supplies of axes and mattocks for the laborers, yokes and chains for the thousands of oxen that would pull the carts and wagons and provide fresh meat, harnesses and bellybands for the horses, sickles and scythes for clearing the grass and bushes at the gun sites, balances and weights for weighing out the charges of gunpowder, and leather buckets for carrying it to the guns, and dozens of other sundries needful on campaign. The quantities assembled far surpassed those required by any earlier military undertaking, and were reminiscent of that other immense invasion of France, the meeting of Henry and Francis I at the Field of Cloth of Gold. Hundreds of chests of arrows and barrels of bowstrings. Six thousand horseshoes and three hundred thousand horseshoe nails and other sorts of nails. Six thousand pounds of rope and twenty thousand suits of armor.

  The scale of the undertaking was no more staggering than the minuteness of its requirements. Exact instructions had to be drawn up for the royal armorers as to the filing and engraving of armor, the trimming of javelins and the gilding of buckles, the burnishing of the king's own panoply in the privy armory under the supervision of his armorer Erasmus Kyrkenar. As the mustering proceeded there was a huge demand for arms in London, and to prevent merchants and "covetous persons" from

  gouging the soldiers official price lists were circulated. No more than one shilling and eightpence could be charged for a pair of jointed gauntlets or for a Flemish halbert "of the best sort," and for a full complement of arms and armor, with demy-lance, cuirass, vambrace, and headpiece, forty-five shillings at most.^ Offending suppliers were imprisoned and fined ten pounds.

  Providing sufficient horseflesh for the army was a considerable task in itself. Draft horses, seven abreast, were needed to pull carts and ordnance, and for hauling food and drink. It was calculated that 420 horses were required to carry five days' supply of biscuit for twelve thousand men; 315 more were needed to carry their cheese, and six hundred their beverage. Beyond these, large numbers of riding horses were needed, and strong warhorses to bear armed knights.

  Scores of letters went out from the court to landholders in the countryside, commanding them to provide as many mares and geldings "meet for draught and carriage" as they could spare "without disfumi-ture of necessary tillage and husbandry." Hundreds of horses had to be imported from the con
tinent as well, and hundreds more brought from the private stables of the king and nobles. For several years, Marillac noted, Henry and his courtiers had been turning their parklands into stud farms. Parliamentary acts now required every lord to keep a number of horses available in proportion to his rents, and these, plus the royal farms on the Welsh border and in Nottinghamshire, yielded a good number of mounts. In addition Henry had two stables of a hundred horses each—a change from the late 1530s when his stables had been markedly reduced. Horses were among the least replaceable necessities of war, and to ensure that they suffered no damage in crossing the Channel particular specifications were drawn up for the ships that would carry them to Calais. For balance, the ships were to be designed to carry horses on both sides of their holds; their beams were to be high enough for the horses to stand under them, "for if they be too low the horses' backs shall be marred."

  Henry devoted more time and attention to fortifications and armaments than to anything else. For years he had been employing expert engineers from all over Europe to design and build his bulwarks and repair his castles and fortresses; a Sicilian builder helped to improve England's coastal defenses in the late 1530s, while in 1541, a Portuguese was brought in to direct the rebuilding of fortifications at the important outlying fortress of Guines in the Calais Pale. The latter had the misfortune to disagree with his royal employer about the prospects for defense. After looking over the town and castle he came to England to report to Henry and his privy councilors. It would be impossible to fortify Guines in an efficient manner, he said. Two high hills in the vicinity looked directly down into the town; its streets were easy targets for any attackers gaining control of the hilltops.