In London all the talk was of the king's fragile health, of Prince Edward who would soon be king (though some thought his sister Mary might after all succeed), and of the shifting status of the men in power. There was much talk of treason, and of suspicion of treason; the lord mayor was commanded to "inquire secretly" for such as spoke against the king or knew of conspiracies against him.^ It was known that the men of the Privy Council were plotting one another's destruction, and that at least once they had come to blows. Little political sophistication was needed to realize that, as Van der Delft wrote to Charles V, Henry's death "would plunge everything here into confusion."
The king spent Christmas in the capital, in the utmost seclusion. The queen had been sent away to Greenwich, with most of the court and household; only the councilors and a few chamber gentlemen attended Henry. Ostensibly, it was the arrest and disgrace of Norfolk and Surrey that prompted this isolation. Yet Henry had never before been away from his spouse at Christmas, and the imperial ambassador suspected that in fact the king was dying. Earlier in the month he had wrestled with a fever for some thirty hours, and ever since then his complexion had been sallow and his body "greatly fallen away." He managed to get out of bed and dress, but he could do little or nothing, and as the new year opened Seymour was more and more in command of affairs.
Though he knew his life to be ebbing Henry still forbade his family to gather at his bedside. The queen remained at Greenwich, the royal children at country houses far from court. The physicians governed all, torturing the king's bloated legs with cautery and swabbing the sweat from his fevered torso. As they worked over him they frowned and muttered to one another, fearing to pronounce the king's imminent death (which was treason), yet fearing to give false hope lest they be blamed when the end came. For several weeks, from late December to mid-January, no one was allowed in to see Henry and there was no word of his condition. Rumor had it that he was dead; whatever his state, the French ambassador wrote, "it can only be bad and will not last long.""*
It seems odd that, in his last days, Henry did not summon his
370 GREAT HARRY
nine-year-old son to his bedside to instruct and encourage him for the responsibiUties he was soon to inherit. It may be that, against all reasonable hope, Henry believed he could find the strength to throw over his diseases yet again. All his life he had fled from disease, and looked on death and reminders of death with an exaggerated abhorrence. Probably he chose now to ignore the finality of his circumstances, and in any case he had always avoided final partings.
Prince Edward was at Ashridge, much in doubt for his father's health and without the comfort of his stepmother or half-sisters. Young as he was he knew he was expected to toughen himself against grief and the dread of becoming king. As he waited in the wintry country house for news from the court he wrote in elegant Latin formal letters of thanks for his New Year's gifts. He wrote to his father, promising to strive to follow his example "in virtue, wisdom and piety." He wrote to the queen, thanking her for the double portrait of herself and Henry that she had sent him, and received a reply urging him to "meditate upon the distinguished deeds of his father," as he gazed at the portrait he liked so well.^
On January 16 de Selve was admitted to Westminster to see the king. He found him "fairly well," and spoke to him of continental affairs. Henry's thoughts were of fortifications and military supplies, of the artillery and powder and armor being sent north to defend the Scots border, of the impoverished soldiers defending Boulogne. He spoke competently, but relied a good deal on Paget, who occasionally spoke for him and who seemed much the better informed of the two.
Henry now turned to Paget for help as he had never turned to anyone. The two men spent entire nights in conversation—or so Paget later claimed—presumably working out the details of the new government that would soon come to power.^ Eventually Seymour joined them, and still later the other councilors, until at last the shape of the regency that would govern for Edward became clear.
In 1540 Henry had written to Norfolk that, given his regal destiny and ancestry, "his progenitors afore him emperors in their own realm and dominions," he had no doubt that he would leave his kingdom "in as good case to his son as his father before left it unto him, and better."^ In fact the realm was in an exceedingly unhealthy state, its currency eroded and its credit all but gone, its people alienated, its military standing insecure. For a generation after Henry VIII's death his successors would wrestle with the conflicts and crises he had created, seeking in vain to impose stability and permanency on a realm in flux. In time Henry's younger daughter, her strength and force of character as striking as her father's and her personal fortunes favorable, would preside over calmer times. But for the next few years there would be hardship and unrest on a massive scale, extremism in government, and, in the royal Council, men who enriched themselves with a calculating rapacity that would have astonished the old king as much as it enraged him.
The design for the successor government was embodied in Henry's will, drawn up in final form (but not signed) in late December and altered, to benefit Seymour and his allies, either in Henry's last hours or in the early days of the new reign.^ Sixteen councilors were to guide Edward
through his minority, among them Seymour, Dudley, Paget, Herbert, and Denny. Among the sixteen were diplomats, jurists, administrators and two churchmen—the ancient Cuthbert Tunstall, who had served Henry since the early years of his reign, and Archbishop Cranmer. It would have seemed a balanced group of men, save for the evident mastery of Seymour, Paget and Dudley. Of their political opponents, Gardiner had been excluded by the king himself, who declared to Denny that "surely, if he were in my testament, and one of you, he would cumber you all and you would never rule him, he is of so troublesome a nature.'* And Norfolk lay in the Tower, awaiting his sentence of death.
Henry's will directed that he be buried at Windsor, "midway between the stalls and the high alter,'' in a tomb "now almost finished" (Wolsey's tomb). Queen Jane's bones were to be placed alongside his; the will did not specify Queen Catherine's eventual resting place. Beside the tomb an altar was to be furnished "for the saying of daily masses while the world shall endure," and to complement this divine commemoration Henry instituted a human one. Thirteen poor men were to be selected to form a new order of knighthood, the Poor Knights, each to receive a daily stipend and, every year, a long gown of white cloth as the livery of their order. Beyond this, forty pounds a year was to be given in alms to the poor, though not to "common beggars," if avoidable.^
On January 27 Henry gave the order which would send Norfolk to his death the next morning. By evening, though, it appeared that he might not outlive the duke. He suffered a relapse, and sank weakly down into his pillows as if for the last time. The doctors shook their heads, and Denny, of all the men in the room least fearful of his master's anger, told him gravely that "in man's judgment" he had not long to live.
It was the last hour of human reckoning, the time when on the brink of promised immortality mortal man must wrestle with his conscience and his God. What Henry's thoughts were in that hour no one ever knew: whether in his extremity he doubted his past judgment, or glimpsed in a moment of insight the pain and terror he had brought to those who loved and feared him. Whatever his ruminations, his faith did not waver in the face of death. The mercy of Christ, he declared to those about him, was "able to pardon all his sins, though they were greater than they be."
He was urged to call a priest. He wanted only Cranmer, Henry replied, but not yet. "I will first take a little sleep, and then, as I feel myself, I will advise upon the matter."
He slept, and then, waking, sent for the archbishop, who came from Croydon as fast as he could ride, shivering in the midnight cold. As he waited for Cranmer Henry was overcome by a paralyzing weakness. By the time the archbishop arrived he could not speak. He fought for consciousness. There was no time for the last rites, no possibility of confession, but the king still had some power of movement. Cra
nmer asked him for a sign of his faith in the redemptive grace of Christ. With an effort he seized Cranmer's hand and wrung it with all his remaining strength. Soon afterward, at about two o'clock in the morning of January 28, he died.
There was at first no announcement, no immediate mourning, only
372 ' GREAT HARRY
secrecy and planning by the councilors who now held power. But one man guessed the truth. In the Tower, the time appointed for Norfolk's execution came and went, and he lived on. Had Henry personally intervened to save him he would have heard of it. The silent reprieve—or was it merely a postponement?—could mean only one thing: the old king was dead, and the duke's fate and England's had passed into new hands.
Notes
BIHR
Brown, Qd.,Four Years
Byrne
EconHR EETS EHR L.P.
Mil. Cal.
Sp. Cal.
TRHS
Ven. Cal.
ABBREVIATIONS
Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research.
Brown, Rawdon, ed. and trans., Four Years at the Court of Henry VHI, 2 vols. London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1854.
Byrne, Muriel St. Clare, ed., The Letters of King Henry VHI. London: Cassell, 1936.
Economic History Review.
Early English Text Society.
English Historical Review.
Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VHI, ed. J. S. Brewer, R. H. Brodie and James Gairdner, 21 vols. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1862-1910.
Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts, Existing in the Archives and Collections of Milan, ed. Allen B. Hinds, Vol. I. London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1912.
Calendar of Letters, Despatches, and State Papers, relating to the Negotiations between England and Spain, preserved in the Archives at Vienna, Simancas, Besangon and Brussels, ed. Pascual de Gayangos, G. A. Bergenroth, M. A. S. Hume, Royall Tyler, and Garrett Mattingly, 13 vols. London: His and Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1862-1954.
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society.
Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts, Relating to English Affairs, Existing in the Archives and Collections of Venice, and in Other Libraries of Northern Italy, ed. Rawdon Brown and Allen B. Hinds, 38 vols. London: Longman and Co., 1864-1947.
References to L.P., Sp. Cal., Ven. Cal. and similar collections are to page numbers, not document numbers.
374 NOTES
PART ONE
YOUNG HARRY
Chapter 1
1. The Reign of Henry VII from contemporary sources, ed. Albert F. Pollard, University of London Historical Series, No. 1, 3 vols. (London, 1913-14), I, 106.
2. Gladys Temperley, Henry VII (Boston and New York, 1914), 67.
3. Ibid., 123.
4. Pollard, td., Reign of Henry VII, I, 220.
5. Nicholas Harris Nicolas, ed.. Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York: Wardrobe Accounts of Edward the Fourth (London, 1830), 219.
6. Temperley, 122.
7. Pollard, ed.. Reign of Henry VII, II, 232; Nicolas, ed.. Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York, 198; A. F. Pollard, Henry VIII, new ed. (London, 1951), 19.
8. Temperiey, 383-84.
9. Charlotte Augusta Sneyd, trans.. Relation or rather a true account of the island of England; . . . about the year 1500, Camden Society, Old series, XXXVII (London, 1847), 85.
Chapter 2
1. Frank Arthur Mumby, The Youth of Henry VIII: A Narrative in Contemporary Letters (London, 1913), 3.
2. F. M. Salter, ed., "Skelton's Speculum principis,'' Speculum, IX, No. 1 (January 1934), 25-37.
3. Percival Hunt, Fifteenth Century England (Pittsburgh, 1962), 76-79.
4. Quoted in Ruth Kelso, The Doctrine of the English Gentleman in the Sixteenth Century, University of Illinois Studies in Language and Literature, Vol. XIV(Urbana, Illinois, 1929), 157.
5. Ibid., 157.
6. Edith Rickert, ed.. The Babees' Book: Medieval Manners for the Young (New York and London, 1908), 252.
7. Kelso, 80-81.
Chapter 3
1. Temperley, 379-80 and note.
2. Nicolas, td.. Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York, 37.
3. Ibid., 3.
4. Pollard, ed.. Reign of Henry VII, II, 4.
5. Ibid., 1,219.
6. E. M. G. Routh, Lady Margaret, Mother of Henry VII (London, 1924), 103.
7. Ibid., 25.
Chapter 4
1. Sp. Cal. 1,318.
2. Mumby,47^8.
3. Nicolas, ed.. Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York, xciii.
Chapter 5
1. Pollard, ed.. Reign of Henry VII, I, 238-39.
2. Ibid., I, xxiii.
3. Ibid., I, 205-6; J. R. Halt, Renaissance Europe (New York, 1973), 165.
4. Pollard, ed., Reign of Henry VH, II, 5.
5. Ibid., 1,238-39.
6. Temperley, 391.
7. Pollard, ed.. Reign of Henry VII, I, Ixii; Temperley, 311.
8. Temperley, 340.
9. Sp. Cal. I, 406-7.
10. Pollard, ed.. Reign of Henry VH, I, 238.
Chapter 6
1. James Gairdner, ed., Memorials of King Henry VIII, Rolls Series, No. 10, 2 vols. (London, 1858), II, 124.
2. Correspondencia de Gutierre Gomez de Fuensalida, embajador en Alemania, Flandes e Inglaterra (1458-1509) (Madrid, 1907), 449.
3. Ibid.
4. L.P. XIII:ii,318.
5. GsiiTdner, ed.. Memorials, II, 128.
6. Frederick Chamberlin, The Private Character of Henry the Eighth (New York, 1931), 105; S. B. Chrimes,//^/2ry V//(Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1972), 314 and note.
7. Sp. Cal. II, 15.
8. Pollard, ed.. Reign of Henry VII, I, 330 points out that the later tradition that Henry died on April 22 was in error.
Chapter 7
1. L.P. 1,31.
2. Correspondencia de Fuensalida, 518ff.
3. Sp. Cal. II, 14.
4. Edward Hall, The triumphant reigne of King Henry the VIII, ed. Charles Whibley, 2 vols. (London, 1904), I, 5.
Chapter 8
1. Sp. Cal. 11,40-41.
2. Ven. Cal. II, 30.
376 ' NOTES
3. Sp. Cal. 11,42.
4. L.P. 1,35,42,44, 129.
5. Many of the verses to Henry VIII's early songs, preserved in "Henry VIII's MS," are printed in John Stevens, Music and Poetry in the Early Tudor Court (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1961), 386-^25.
6. Hall, I, 15.
7. Sp. Cal. II, 44.
8. L.P. I:i, 284.
9. State Papers of Henry VIII, 11 vols. (London, 1830-1852), I, 95.
10. Ven. Cal. II, 5.
11. Ibid., 21.
12. B. P. Wolffe has re-evaluated the extent of the fortune Henry VII left to his son. The young king began his reign with only a moderate surplus, though in an age of royal insolvency this made him remarkable.
13. James Anthony Froude, Life and Letters of Erasmus (London, 1894), 98.
14. Ibid., 97.
Chapter 9
1. L.P. I:i, 178.
2. Sp. Cal. II, 38.
3. Ibid., Supplement to Vols. I and II, 40.
4. Ibid.
5. State Papers, I, 45-46.
6. J. S. Brewer, The Reign of Henry VIII: from his Accession to the Death of Wolsey, ed. James Gairdner, 2 vols. (London, 1884), I, 45.
7. L.P. I:i, 370.
PART TWO
GREAT HARRY
Chapter 10
1. L.P. I:ii,919, 1495.
2. This account of the fighting at Agincourt is based in part on John Keegan, The Face of Battle (New York, 1976), 79-116.
3. Arthur B. Ferguson, The Indian Summer of English Chivalry (Durham, North Carolina, 1960), 68, 160-62.
4. Ven. Cal. II, 95-%.
5. Denys Hay, ed.. The anglica historia of Polydore Vergil, 1485-1537, Camden Society, Third series, LXXIV (London, 1950), 161, 197.
6. Froude, ed.,Life and Let
ters, 225. I concur with Froude's judgment that in Erasmus' usage the term cordatissimus exceeds it conventional meaning; "high-heartedness" or "fullness of heart" are close approximations.
7. Ibid., 244-^.
9. L.P. I:ii, 1489-90.
10. Fvoude, cd., Life and Letters, 171.
11. Ven. Cat. 11,54.
12. L.P. I:i, 423-24.
13. Ibid., 675.
14. Ibid.
15. /^zW., 580; L./'. I:ii, 949.
16. Sp. Cal. II, 96.
17. L.P. I:i,831.
18. Ibid., 798.
19. Nicholas Harris Nicolas, ed.. Privy Purse Expenses of King Henry the Eighth, from November 1529 to December 1532 (London, 1827), 351-52, 362.
20. L.P. II:ii, 1461; Ven. Cal. II, 105.
21. L.P. I:ii,945.
Chapter 11
1. Keegan, 91, 98; C. H. Firth, "The ballad history of the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII," TRHS, Third series, II (London, 1908), 30-31; Charles W. C. Oman, A History of the Art of War in the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1937), 382-83.
2. L.P. I:i,814.
3. Ibid., I:ii, 1003,1184.
4. Sp. Cal II, 148.
5. Ven. Cal. II, 83.
6. L.P. I:ii, 880.
7. Ibid., 923,965.
8. Ibid., 1058.
9. Ibid., 942,944, 1057.
10. Ibid., 1322-23, 1554-56.
11. Hall, I, 62.
12. L.P. I:ii, 972.
13. Henry's biographers disagree about his involvement in the Battle of the Spurs. While it is true that he was not among the English knights who rode against the French at Guinegate, according to the military historian Charles Oman he led his footsoldiers in the direction of the French camp as soon as the panic retreat of the French began, thus joining the pursuit albeit at a considerable distance. Oman, Art of War, 292.
Chapter 12
1. L.P. II:ii, 1457; Ernest Law, England's First Great War Minister (London, 1916), 97-98.
2. L.P. I:ii, 954.
3. Ibid., 1060; A//1 Cal. I, 414-15.
4. Ven. Cal. II, 142.
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