Henry's sickroom expenses during 1546 included perfumes to freshen his rooms and scent his sheets, repairs to his old close stools and the cost of a new one, upholstered in black velvet, with a down seat, "elbows and side pieces" and black silk fringe. He also had "two pair of large slippers newly devised" to warm his feet, though the rest of his wardrobe retained its traditional elegance. Hose of white leather and crimson satin, velvet nightcaps and hats, gold lace, and feathers for trim were among the items supplied for the king by his milliner in the last two years of his life. His jewels were more dazzling than ever. To his dozens of rings set with diamonds and rubies and emeralds he now added gems from the dissolved monasteries: precious stones of all kinds removed from gold crosses and altar ornaments, a huge amethyst, and "the Great Sapphire of Glastonbury.'* There were so many of these loose jewels that he had to order a new coffer, "with drawers to put stones in," from his cabinetmaker.^^
Henry's intellectual curiosity did not dim as his physical activity decreased. He ordered new books and a locking coffer to carry them in, calendars and almanacs for the year 1546, and plenty of writing paper. He read with spectacles now, which he ordered ten pair at a time. They helped him to make out the names on a globe he commissioned, and to read his numerous clocks, among them timepieces "fashioned like books," or set in crystal and adorned with rubies and diamonds.^^
For amusement Henry had his fools, who made faces while he dined, sang him bawdy songs, ridiculed everyone and everything, and created diverting anarchy at his command. When his old jester Sexten grew feeble with age in the mid-1530s a replacement had been found, a boy then no more than fifteen with a remarkable gift for comic invention.*** But the favorite fool remained Will Somers, who for twenty years both made
Henry laugh and acted as a confidant. In his green doublet and cap with multicolored fringe, carrying his monkey or, as in one portrait, a horn, Somers was a figure of mockery yet not of frivolity. He was as treasured by his master as the favored musicians who played for Henry in his privy chamber; as a companion he was indispensable. The artist who illustrated Henry's personal psalter in 1540 chose to portray the king seated on a chest, his legs crossed at the ankle, playing a small Welsh harp. Beside him was Will Somers, his hands clasped before him, his attention elsewhere. Bald and with a beard more white than red the king looks old in the painting, yet Somers, despite his wrinkles, looks puckish and boyish.
When his health permitted Henry walked in his gardens, where in 1546 he ordered his gardeners to plant four thousand rosebushes. He grew there the large artichokes he loved to eat, and employed men skilled in grafting to create new plants and care for the rarer species. He gave much time to his animals as well: his canary birds, his ferrets, his beagles and hounds and spaniels. There were still some eighty riding horses in his stables, including four "Barbary horses," or Arabians, but Henry could no longer ride them.
Hawking had become a serious passion of Henry's, and he paid as much attention to the great gerfalcons and peregrines as another man might have paid to his children. He sent a hawks master to Ireland to collect good hunting birds, in a ship fitted out with a special cabin for conveying them back to England. He officially prohibited his subjects from taking hawks' eggs or young birds to raise at home, lest their numbers in the wild be reduced, and made certain his eleven falconers dosed the birds with sugar candy, horehound water, and rhubarb, and with special pills when they were molting. The apothecaries' records for 1545 listed **diverse medicines for hawks often sundry sorts in silver boxes, by order of the king," and among Henry's personal expenses at the same time were hawks' hoods and bells, silk hawking bags and gloves.^^
Court pastimes continued as they always had, with music and dancing, masking and revelry at the appointed seasons, and entertainers such as the two brothers, '^keepers of the king's bears," who amused the courtiers with the bloody spectacle of bear-baiting. Ferocious dogs tore at the legs and belly of a tethered bear, maddening him with pain and rage so that he lashed out at them with his claws and maimed or killed them. No one thought the sport inappropriate for children, and Prince Edward had his own bears and bearward just as his father had. Edward played a key role in the ceremonial reception of the French admiral Claude d'An-nebaut, the last large-scale display of pageantry of the reign. With Cranmer and his uncle Edward Seymour, the prince rode to meet the admiral at Hounslow, escorted by eight hundred yeomen of the guard. He was not yet nine years old, but his horsemanship was so flawless it would have done credit to his father, and the speech he made—perhaps in his excellent schoolboy Latin, as he had only recently begun to study French—was full of '*high wit and great audacity." Throughout the days of celebrations that followed the prince often took his father's place,
carrying out his responsibilities with precocious gravity and royal composure.
Yet even as they went about their accustomed duties the household servants watched and waited for the king to die, and in the midst of their pleasures the courtiers maneuvered for primacy of place around the king, and calculated their chances of retaining power in the new reign.
Of the leading councilors, many were newly come to influence. William Paget, principal secretary of state since 1543, was the unglamor-ous but highly competent administrator overseeing the ordinary work of government. John Dudley, who had been given Arthur Plantagenet's title Lord Lisle and was raised to the earldom of Warwick in 1546, was among the fastest-rising of the younger men; his distinguished military and naval reputation (he was lord admiral), his close alliance with Edward Seymour and his ability to divert the invalid king as a partner at cards all helped his political fortunes. In 1542 died William Fitzwilliam, who had succeeded Cromwell as lord privy seal and who, in Chapuys' view, understood Henry's "nature and temper better than any man in England."
Fitzwilliam had been a reassuring presence for Henry—a companion, if not an intimate, since boyhood, an honest soldier who died fighting the Scots, a man who never triggered his suspicions. Thomas Wriothesley, who succeeded Audley as chancellor in 1544 and, three years later, was given Fitzwilliam's title earl of Southampton, was another sort of man entirely. Like Cromwell, through whose favor he rose in the mid-1530s, Wriothesley combined extreme capability with an awesome capacity for accomplishing virtually anything he set out to do. He had neither powerful family connections nor the customary professional background (in either law or the church) for holding high office, yet by 1542 an observer at court wrote in amazement that Wriothesley "almost governed everything," and he was still far from achieving all his ambitions.
It was the chancellor's chief ambition to keep himself in favor with the king while actively moving against his rivals, and in the last months of the reign Wriothesley joined Gardiner in an extensive campaign to search out and prosecute Protestant "heretics." Factional struggles as much as zeal for the faith had prompted efforts to expose those who held unorthodox theological views throughout the 1540s, but in the summer of 1546 the campaign took a particularly vicious turn when the queen herself was the target of attack.
Catherine Parr was as earnest a reformer as the humanists Henry had patronized as a young man, and her dedication to purifying the church was as persistent as it was sincere. She and her ladies devoted themselves to daily religious discussions, and in the aftermath of these sessions she often took up the same themes with her husband, who on the whole enjoyed their debates. Her influence on the king was considerable—or so her opponents believed—and there was no doubt of its direction. Catherine's personal faith was probably not outside the ever shifting bounds of orthodoxy, but her views ran perilously close to those of outspoken heretics such as Anne Askew, a prominent London reformer given financial support by two at least of Catherine's ladies.
At her every opportunity the queen urged Henry "zealously to proceed in the reformation of the church," pushing him occasionally past the verge of annoyance. On one occasion, according to the Protestant mar-tyrologist John Foxe, Catherine's oppressive godliness and urgent p
ressure for reform led Henry to cry out in anger after she left his presence.
"A good hearing it is, when women become such clerks," he said sarcastically to Gardiner, "and a thing much to my comfort, to come in mine old days to be taught by my wife!" The bishop was only too pleased to feed the king's anger, offering to show him evidence of Catherine's errors, and to prove to him "how perilous a matter it is to cherish a serpent within his own bosom." According to Foxe, the king actually gave Gardiner permission to draw up "certain articles" against the queen, and signed them, and told one of his physicians that he meant to have her charged with heresy.
If court gossip is to be trusted, Catherine was already in peril. Four or five months earlier the imperial ambassador Van der Delft had reported hearing rumors that Henry was seriously thinking of taking a new wife. The talk had spread to Antwerp, where it was even more widespread; there, wagers "that the king's majesty would have another wife" were commonplace.^^ Charles Brandon's widow Catherine, now in her late twenties, was said to be the probable next queen. She was "much talked about," and "in great favor"; as she had borne Brandon two sons, she was known to be fertile, while Catherine Parr had yet to conceive.
Though reportedly "somewhat annoyed at the rumors," Queen Catherine kept her dignity despite this humiliation. But when, according to Foxe, she heard news of her imminent arrest as a heretic, she fainted dead away. Eventually, summoning all her courage—for she knew full well that once evidence had been brought against two of Henry's former queens they were doomed—Catherine went to the king and asked his pardon. She was appropriately subservient, deferring to his higher authority as a man, as her husband and lord, and as "supreme head and governor here in earth, next under God, to lean unto."
"Not so, by Saint Mary," the king is said to have replied. "You are become a doctor, Kate, to instruct us (as we take it), and not to be instructed or directed by us."
It took all of the queen's intelligence and her three years of experience with Henry to turn aside his indignation. In the end, though, she convinced him of her sincere submissiveness and lack of learned pretensions. He was mollified.
"And is it even so, sweetheart," he said finally, "and tended your argument to no worse end? Then perfect friends we are now again as ever at any time heretofore."
The next day, as Henry and Catherine were walking in a garden at Whitehall, Wriothesley appeared with an escort of forty men, intending to arrest the queen and take her to prison as planned. The chancellor approached the king; they had words. The next thing Wriothesley knew Henry was shouting insults at him. Clearly there had been some mistake.
Wriothesley backed off and led his men away, bewildered, the king's words—''Knave! Arrant knave! Beast! And fool!"—still ringing in his ears.
That Henry should go to such lengths and put his wife at such peril merely in order to embarrass his ministers and assert his primacy over them seems, on the face of it, implausible. Yet three years earlier, when Cranmer had come under attack, Henry had warned, forearmed, and rescued the archbishop just as he did Catherine, and to the same purpose. Cranmer's accusers were given the same treatment Wriothesley received, with the same clear meaning: only the king could read the king's thoughts, and guess his actions. Keeping those around him surprised and off balance had long been a hallmark of Henry's personal politics; in his old age it took on sinister outlines.
One victim Henry chose not to rescue at the last moment: his sour, irascible lieutenant Norfolk. The duke, having twice survived his king's severe indignation, little expected a third crisis. Following the disgrace of his niece Catherine Howard Norfolk had escaped the wrath that fell on his family; to preserve his own standing he had ranged himself with Henry against Catherine, saying loudly that she deserved to be burned for her crime and staying away from court on his country estates while his wife, his sister and many of his relatives and servants were imprisoned.^^ He had avoided punishment a second time when, after the capture of Boulogne, he failed to provide adequately for the town's defense. Now, suddenly on December 12, 1546, he was arrested and taken to imprisonment in the Tower.
It was his son's treasonous misconduct that Norfolk's enemies used to bring him down. Henry Howard, earl of Surrey and heir to the ducal title, was an arrogant lordling who though not yet thirty had made a brilliant name as a soldier and poet and a more dubious reputation as a quarrelsome troublemaker. Tall and lanky, with the jaunty bearing and style of a bom egotist, Surrey won Henry's admiration for his wit and poetry, his air of command, and his excellence as a jouster and soldier. That he was exceedingly hot-tempered and given to rowdy midnight excursions through the London streets, breaking windows, assaulting honest citizens and shooting at prostitutes, was an annoyance to be overlooked.
But when it was discovered that Surrey was guilty of much more than this, that he had actually altered his arms to indicate a strong claim to the throne, and this at a time when the end of the reign loomed near, he began to seem dangerous. He was arrested, and his father with him, and it was Edward Seymour, earl of Hertford and bitter enemy to both men, who was put in charge of Surrey's trial.
To many, the arrests of Norfolk and Surrey seemed inexplicable. Whether like Cranmer and the queen they were victims of the devouring power-hunger of their enemies in the Council, or whether it was the king's fateful disapproval that fell on them at last, remains uncertain.
Certainly Henry involved himself in Surrey's trial, poring over the legal documents at his desk in the privy chamber and making notes on the nature of the earl's offenses. In Henry's apocalyptic imagination at least
both Norfolk and Surrey were guilty of a monstrous plot to assassinate the entire Council and take control of Prince Edward, ensuring their dominance in the next reign.^^ At the very least they deserved death. Surrey was executed in January of 1547; no one doubted that his father would soon end his life in the same way. Edward Seymour, who had served his king well as chief of the commissioners who condemned Surrey, now read through the inventories of the confiscated Howard wealth in anticipation of all that would come to him.
He that dieth with honour livethfor ever, And the defamed dead recovereth never.
Seymour did inherit the bulk of the Howard wealth and possessions in time, but as the year 1546 ended he had a larger prize well within his grasp. With his allies Dudley and Paget, the privy chamber gentlemen Anthony Denny and William Herbert, Seymour had a firm grip on the Council, the king and the future. As head of the chamber gentlemen and Henry's close intimate Denny was able, to an extent, to control who the king saw and what he heard. With Wriothesley, who had shifted his allegiance to the Seymour faction once they seemed likely to prevail, Paget oversaw government. Council meetings from December 1546 to early January 1547 were held at Seymour's London house. And, most important, Denny and his servants were keepers of the "dry stamp," the official instrument which for the last fifteen months had replaced the king's manual signature on all state papers. The dry stamp impressed a replica of the signature on paper; a clerk then traced the outline in ink. To a large extent command of the stamp meant command of the country, and it is a strong indication of the alertness and continuing power of the aged king that Seymour was cautious about abusing it.
Throughout the summer and into the fall of 1546 Henry was alternately indisposed and unexpectedly active. He spoke of undertaking an extensive progress to the far comers of the realm, and though nothing came of this he did manage a fair amount of hawking. He was ill in July, and, for a time, shut himself away in marked depression. But the ambassadors took this to be a reaction to recent events (peace had been made with France, but the French continued to build fortifications and there was fear of renewed warfare), and wrote in their dispatches that he was "very well."*
On September 4 the king left for his customary fall hunting tour. He planned to visit "houses remote from towns," he said; he did not intend to alter his itinerary because of possible ill health. He went first to Oatlands, where great stags were driven within range
of hunters shooting from fixed standings. Henry took his turn among the hunters; according to a man who watched the hunt the king actually coursed with greyhounds and rode down the stags on horseback as well, shooting at them with darts and spears. Three days later he was still spending long hours in the fields, "always at the chase," but soon afterward he paid for his excess. He became seriously ill, and though visitors to the itinerant court were told that it was only a cold Van der Delft found out from his informants that in
368
fact he was in '*great danger."^ Yet once again he recovered, and by early October was at his hunting again, and receiving ambassadors with his accustomed air of majesty.
To the last the king spoke with keen and well-informed interest about military and governmental matters, directing diplomatic maneuvers so baffling in their intricacy that his underlying aims are impossible to discover. As often as he was able he talked for hours to Van der Delft and the new French ambassador Odet de Selve; as in the past, the envoys noted that his eyes Ht with excitement when he sensed intrigue, and that any hint of dissimulation or deceit made him indignant.
Yet after October it became more and more difficult to obtain an audience with Henry. Either he was indisposed, or he had retired to take his medicines and prepare himself for his healing baths, or he had gone hoarse with a cold. Sometimes when he was said to be ill he was in fact abroad hunting, but as the holidays approached he succumbed to what was to be his last illness.
Great Harry Page 52
